
ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

BY 

THOMAS B. SHAW, B.A., 

PEOFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE IMPERIAL ALEXANDER 
LYCEUM OP ST. PETERSBURG. 

A NEW AMERICAN EDITION, 

"WITH 

A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, 

BY 

HENRY T. TUCKERMAN, 

AUTHOR OP "CHARACTERISTICS OP LITERATURE," ETC. 




PHILADELPHIA: 
BLANCHARD AND LEA. 
1852. 



Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1 852, by 
BLANCHARD AND LEA, 
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States in and 
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 

STEREOTYPED BY J. FAGAN. 



Printed by T. K. & P. G- Collins. 



AMERICAN PUBLISHERS' NOTICE. 



In presenting a new edition of the " Outlines of Eng- 
lish Literature," the publishers have thought that a brief 
sketch of what has been accomplished by the authors of 
this country would render it more complete and more suit- 
-ible for the use to which it has been applied, as a class- 
Dok in many of our best seminaries and academies. They 
*ve, therefore, induced Mr. Tuckerman to undertake that 
: ,k, which he has executed upon the same general plan 
as that adopted by the author. The present edition is 
therefore presented in the hope that it will be found even 
more worthy than the former of the wide popularity which 
the work has acquired. 



Philadelphia, June, 1852. 



TO THE EEADER. 



The author of the following pages has been engaged, 
during some years, as Professor of English Literature in 
the Imperial Alexander Lyceum of St. Petersburg; and, 
both in the discharge of his duties there and in his private 
teaching, he has very frequently felt the want of a Manual, 
concise but comprehensive, on the subject of his lectures. 
The plan generally adopted in foreign countries, of allow- 
ing the pupil to copy the lecturer's manuscript notes, was 
in this case found to be impracticable; and the often- 
repeated request of the students to be furnished with some 
elementary book, as a framework or skeleton of the course, 
could only be met by a declaration, singular as the fact 
might appear, that no such work, cheap, compendious, and 
tolerably readable, existed in English. The excellent vo- 
lumes of Warton are obviously inapplicable to such a pur- 
pose ; for they only treat of one portion of English literature 
— the poetry; and of that only down to the Elizabethan 
age. Their plan, also, is far too extensive to render them 
useful to the general student. Chambers's valuable and 
complete ' Cyclopaedia of English Literature' is as much too 
voluminous as his shorter sketch is too dry and list-like; 
while the French and German essays on the subject are not 
only limited in their scope, but are full of very erroneous 
critical judgments. 

Induced by these circumstances, the author has endea- 

riv) 



TO THE READER. 



V 



voured to produce a volume which might serve as a useful 
outline Introduction to English Literature both to the Eng- 
lish and the foreign student. This little work, it is needless 
to say, has no pretensions whatsoever to the title of a com- 
plete Course of English Literature : it is merely an attempt 
to describe the causes, instruments, and nature of those 
great revolutions in taste which form what are termed 
"Schools of Writing." In order to do this, and to mark 
more especially those broad and salient features which ought 
to be clearly fixed in the reader's mind before he can profit- 
ably enter upon the details of the subject, only the greater 
names — the greater types of each period — have been exa- 
mined ; whilst the inferior, or merely imitative^ writers have 
been unscrupulously neglected : in short, the author has 
marked only the chief luminaries in each intellectual con- 
stellation ; he has not attempted to give a complete Cata- 
logue of Stars. 

This method appears to unite the advantages of concise- 
ness and completeness ; for, should the reader push his 
studies no farther, he may at least form clear ideas of the 
main boundaries and divisions of English literature ; whilst 
the frequent change of topic will, the author trusts, render 
these pages much less tiresome and monotonous than a 
regular sytematic treatise. 

He has considered the greater names in English literature 
under a double point of view: first, as glorified types and 
noble expressions of the religious, social, and intellectual 
physiognomy of their times; and secondly, in their own 
individuality: and he hopes that the sketches of the great 
Baconian revolution in philosophy, of the state of the Drama 
under Elizabeth and James the First, of the intellectual 
character of the Commonwealth and Restoration, and of the 
romantic school of fiction, of Byronism, and of the present 
tendencies of poetry, may be found — however imperfectly 
executed — to possess some interest, were it only as the first 
1* 



vi 



TO THE READER. 



attempt to treat, in a popular manner, questions hitherto 
neglected in elementary books, but which the increased intel- 
ligence of the present age renders it no longer expedient to 
pass over without remark. 

The work was written in the brief intervals of very active 
and laborious duties, and in a country where the author 
could have no access to an English library of reference : 
whatever errors and oversights it may contain on minor 
points will, therefore, he trusts, be excused. The only merits 
to which it can have any claim are somewhat of novelty in 
its plan, and the attempt to render it as little dry — as read- 
able, in short — as was consistent with accuracy and com- 
prehensiveness. 

It is proposed that this volume shall be followed by a 
second, nearly similar in bulk, and divided into the same 
number of chapters, containing a selection of choice passages 
from the writers treated of in these pages, and forming a 
Chrestomathia to be read with the biographical and critical 
account of each author. The student will, therefore, at once 
have before him a distinct view of the literary character and 
genius of each great writer, and striking extracts from that 
writer's works ; he will thus be insensibly led, not only to 
form his taste and fill his memory with beautiful images and 
thoughts, but to acquire a clearer notion of the peculiar 
merits of each author than he could obtain from the meagre 
and unconnected fragments to be found in the existing col- 
lections of English prose and verse. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
The English Language. 

PAGE 

Britons — Their priental Origin — Caesar's Invasion, b. c. 60 — Traces 
of the Celtic Speech in Britain — Analysis of English — Saxon 
Tongue — Disuse of Saxon Inflection — The English Th — The 
-English W — Pronunciation — Latin Element — Origin of English 
Language — Norman Conquest — William the Conqueror — Monas- 
teries — Twelfth Century — Saxon Chronicle — Norman French — 
Layamon — Thirteenth Century — Robert of Gloucester — Neolo- 
gism — Fourteenth Century — Mannyng — Wickliffe and Chaucer — . 
Gower — Hermit of Hampole — Pleadings in English — Trevisa, 
Translation of Higden — Mandeville — Fifteenth Century — Lydgate 

— Statutes in English — Sixteenth Century — Reformation — Cheke 

— Skelton — Surrey and Wyatt — Berners — Ascham — Spenser — 
Chaucerism — Euphuism — Seventeenth Century — Protectorate — 
Gallicism — Restoration — Eighteenth Century — Proportion of 
Saxon in English 25 

CHAPTER IL 

Chaucer and his Times. 

Age of Chaucer — His Birth and Education — Translation in the Four- 
teenth Century — His Early Productions — His Career — Imbued 
•with Proven9al Literature — Character of his Poems — Romaunt of 
the Rose — Troilus and Cresseide — Anachronism — House of Fame 

— Canterbury Tales — Plan of the Work — The Pilgrims — Propo- 
sition of the Host — Plan of the Decameron — Superiority of 
Chaucer's Plan — Dialogue of the Pilgrims — Knight's Tale — 
Squire's Tale — Story of Griselda — Comic Tales — The two Prose 
Tales — Rime of Sir Thopas — Parson's Tale — Language of Chau- 
cer — The Flower and the Leaf 45 

(vii) 



viii 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER III. 
Sidney and Spenser. 

PAGB 

Elizabethan Era — Ages of Pericles, Augustus, the Medici, Louis 
XIV. — Chivalry — Sidney — His Arcadia — His Style — Spenser — 
Shepherd's Calendar — Pastoral — Spenser at Court — Burleigh and 
Leicester — Spenser's Settlement in Ireland — The Faery Queen — 
His Death — Criticism on the Faery Queen — Style, Language, and 
Versification 65 



CHAPTER IV. 
Bacon. 

His Birth and Education — View of the State of Europe — His Career 

— Impeached for Corruption — His Death — His Character — State 
of Philosophy in the Sixteenth Century — Its Corruptions and De- 
fects — Bacon's System — Not a Discoverer — The New Philosophy 

— Analysis of the Instauratio : 1. De Augmentis ; II. Novum Orga- 
num ; III. Sylva Sylvarum ; IV. Scala Intellectus ; V. Prodromi ; 
VI. Philosophia Secunda — The Baconian Logic — His Style — His 
Minor Works 77 

CHAPTER V. 

Origin oe the English Drama. 

Comparison between the Greek and Mediseval Dramas — Similarity of 
their Origin — Illusion in the Drama — Mysteries or Miracle Plays 

— Their Subject and Construction — Moralities — The Vice — In- 
terludes — The Four P.'s — First Regular Dramas — Comedies — 
Tragedies — Early English Theatres — Scenery — Costume — State 

of the Dramatic Profession 95 



CHAPTER VL 

Marlow and Shakspeare. 

Marlow — His Career and Works — His Faustus— His Death — Con- 
temporary Judgments on his Genius — Shakspeare — His Birth, 
Education, and early Life — Traditions respecting him — His Mar- 
riage — Early Studies — Goes to London — His Career — Death and 
Monument — Order of his Works — Roman Plays — His Diction — 
Characters 



CONTENTS. 



ix 



CHAPTER VII. 
The Shakspeaeian Dramatists. 

PAGE 

Ben Jonson — The Humours — His Roman Plays — Comedies — Plots 
— Beaumont and Fletcher — Massinger — Chapman — Dekker — 
Webster — Middleton — Marston — Ford — Shirley 127 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The Great Divines. 

Theological Eloquence of England and France — The Civil War — 
Persecution of the Clergy — Richard Hooker — His Life and Cha- 
racter — Treatise on Ecclesiastical Polity — Jeremy Taylor — Com- 
pared with Hooker — His Life — Liberty of Prophesying — His 
other Works — The Restoration — Taylor's Sermons — Hallam's 
Criticism — Taylor's digressive Style — Isaac Barrow — His im- 
mense Acquirements — Compared to Pascal — The English Uni- 
versities 140 

CHAPTER IX. 
John Milton. 

His Poetical Character — Religious and Political Opinions — Repub- 
licanism — His Learning — Travels in Italy — Prose Works — 
Areopagitica — Prose Style — Treatises on Divorce — His Literary 
Meditations — Tractate on Education — Passion for Music — Para- 
dise Lost — Dante and Milton compared — Study of Romance — 
Campbell's Criticism — Paradise Regained — Minor Poems — Sam- 
son Agonistes 155 



CHAPTER X. 

Butler anb Dryden. 

The Commonwealth, and the Restoration — Milton and Butler — Sub- 
ject and Nature of Hudibras — Hudibras and Don Quixote — State 
of Society at the Restoration — Butler's Life — John Dryden — 
French Taste of the Court — Comedies and rhymed Tragedies — 
Life and Works of Dryden — Dramas — Annus Mirabilis — Absalom 
and Achitophel — Religio Laici — Hind and Panther — Dryden's 
later Works — Translation of Virgil — Odes — Fables — Prefaces 
and Dedications — Juvenal — Mac Flecknoe 172 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XL 
Clarendon, Bunyan, and Locke. 

PAGB 

Clarendon's Life — History of the Rebellion — Characters — John 
Bunyan — The Pilgrim's Progress — Allegory — Style — Life of 
Bunyan — Locke — The New Philosophy — Practical Character of 
Locke's Works — Life — Letters on Toleration — Essay on the 
Human Understanding — Theory of Ideas — Treatises on Govern- 
ment — Essay on Education 193 



CHAPTER XII. 

The Wits op Queen Anne's Reign. 

Artificial School — Pope's early Studies — Pope compared to Dryden 
— Essay on Criticism — Rape of the Lock — Mock-heroic Poetry — 
Temple of Fame, &c. — Translation of Homer — Essay on Man — 
Miscellanies — The Dunciad — Satires and Epistles — Edward 
Young — English Melancholy — The Universal Passion — Night 
Thoughts — Young's Style — His Wit 208 



CHAPTER XIIL 

Swift and the Essayists. 

Coarseness of Manners in the 17th and 18th Centuries — Jonathan 
S-Vpift — Battle of the Books — Tale of a Tub — Pamphlets — Stella 
and Vanessa — Drapier's Letters — Voyages of Gulliver — Minor 
Works — Poems — Steele and Addison — Cato — Tatler — Spectator 
— Samuel Johnson — Prose Style — Satires — London, and The 
Vanity of Human Wishes — Rasselas — Journey to the Hebrides — 
Lives of the Poets — Edition of Shakspeare — Dictionary — Rambler 
and Idler 229 

CHAPTER XIV. 

The Great Novelists. 

History of Prose Fiction — Spain, Italy, and France — The Romance 
and the Novel — Defoe — Robinson Crusoe — Source of its Charm — 
Defoe's Air of Reality — Minor Works — Richardson — Pamela — 
Clarissa Harlowe — Female Characters — Sir Charles Grandison — 
Fielding — Joseph Andrews — Jonathan Wild — Tom Jones — Ame- 
lia — Smollett — Roderick Random — Sea Characters — Peregrin© 



CONTENTS. 



xi 



Pickle — Count Fatliom — Humpliry Clinker — Sterne — Tristram 
Shandy, and the Sentimental Journey — Goldsmith — Chinese Let- 
ters — Traveller and Deserted Village — Vicar of Wakefield — 
Comedies— Histories 251 

CHAPTER XV. 

The Great Historians. 

David Hume — As Historian — As Moralist and Metaphysician — 
Attacks on Revealed Religion — William Robertson — Defects of 
the " Classicist" Historians — Edward Gibbon — The Decline and 
Fall — His Prejudices against Christianity — Guizot's Judgment 
on Gibbon 278 

CHAPTER XVI. 

The Transition School. 

Landscape and Familiar Poetry — James Thomson — The Seasons — 
Episodes — Castle of Indolence — Minor Works — Lyric Poetry — 
Thomas Gray — The Bard, and the Elegy — Collins and Shenstone 

— The Schoolmistress — Ossian — Chatterton and the Rowley 
Poems — William Cowper — George Crabbe — The Lowland Scots 

— Dialect and Literature — Robert Burns 290 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Scott and Southet. 

Walter Scott — The Lay of the Last Minstrel — Marmion — Lady of 
the Lake — Lord of the Isles — Waverley — Guy Mannering — 
Antiquary — Tales of my Landlord — Ivanhoe — Monastery and 
Abbot — Kenilworth — Pirate — Fortunes of Nigel — Peveril — 
Quentin Durward — St. Ronan's Well — Redgauntlet — Tales of 
the Crusaders — Woodstock — Chronicles of the Canongate — Anne 
of Geierstein — Robert Southey — Thalaba and Kehama — Madoc 

— Legendary Tales — Roderick — Prose Works and Miscellanies.. 315 

CHAPTER XVm. 

Moore, Byron, and Shelley. 

Moore — Translation of Anacreon — Little's Poems — Political 
Satires — The Fudge Family — Irish Melodies — Lalla Rookh — 



xii 



CONTENTS. 



Epicurean — Biographies. Byron : Hours of Idleness, and English 
Bards — Romantic Poems — The Dramas — Childe Harold — Don 
Juan — Death of Byron. Shelley: Poems and Philosophy — 
I Queen Mab, Prometheus Unbound, Alastor, &c. — The Cenci — 
Minor Poems and Lyrics 341 



CHAPTER XIX. 



The Modeen Novelists. 



Prose Fiction — The Romance : Walpole, Mrs. Radcliffe, Lewis, 
Maturin, and Mrs. Shelley — James, Ainsworth, and Bulwer — 
The Novel : Miss Burney — Godwin — Miss Edgeworth — Local 
Novels : Gait, Wilson, Banim, &c. — Fashionable Novels : Ward, 
Lister, &c. — Miss Austen — Hook — Mrs. TroUope — Miss Mit- 
ford — Warren — Dickens — Novels of Foreign Life : Beckford, 
Hope, and Morier — Naval and Military Novels : Marryat and 
Robert Scott 368 



CHAPTER XX. 



The Stage, Oratory, Politics, Theology, Metaphysics, 
AND Journalism. 

Comedy in England — Congreve, Farquhar, &c. — Sheridan — The 
Modern Romantic Drama — Oratory in England : Burke — Letters 
of Junius — Modern Theologians : Paley and Butler — Blackstone 
— Adam Smith — Metaphysics : Stewart — Bentham — Periodi- 
cals : the Newspaper, the Magazine, and the Review — The Quar- 
terly, and Blackwood — The Edinburgh, and the New Monthly — 
The Westminster — Cheap Periodical Literature 397 



CHAPTER XXI. 

Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the New Poetry. 

Wordsworth and the Lake School — Philosophical and Poetical Theo- 
ries — The Lyrical Ballads — The Excursion — Sonnets — Cole- 
ridge — Poems and Criticisms — Conversational Eloquence — 
Charles Lamb — The Essays of Elia — Leigh Hunt — Keats — 
Hood — The Living Poets — Conclusion 413 



CONTENTS. 



xiii 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



CHAPTER 1. 

PAGE 

Literature in the Colonies imitative — Relation of American to Eng- 
lish Literature — Gradual Advancement of the United States in 
Letters — Their first Development theological — Writers in this 
Department — Jonathan Edwards — Religious Controversy — Wil- 
liam E. Channing — Writings of the Clergy — Newspapers and 
School Books — Domestic Literature — Female Writers — Oratory — 
Revolutionary Eloquence — American Orators — Alexander Hamil- 
ton — Daniel Wehster and others — Edward Everett — American 
History and Historians — Jared Sparks — David Ramsay — George 
Bancroft — Hildreth — Elliot Lossing — William H. Prescott — 
Irving — Wheaton — Cooper — Parkman 433 

CHAPTER IL 

Belles Lettres — Influence of British Essayists — Franklin — Dennie 

— Signs of Literary Improvement — J onathan Oldstyle — Washing- 
ton Irving — His Knickerbocker — Sketch-Book — His other Works 

— Popularity — Tour on the Prairies — Character as an Author — 
Dana — Wilde — Hudson — Griswold — Lowell — Whipple — Tick- 
nor — Walker — Wayland — James — Emerson — Transcendental- 
ists — Madame Ossoli — Emerson's Essays — Orville Dewey — Hu- 
morous Writers — Belles Lettres — Tudor — Wirt — Sands — Fay 

— Walsh — Mitchell — Kimball — American Travellers — Causes of 
their Success as Writers — Fiction — Charles Brockden Brown — 
His Novels — James Fenimore Cooper — His Novels — Their Po- 
pularity and Characteristics — Nathaniel Hawthorne — His Works 
and Genius — Other American Writers of Fiction 453 

CHAPTER HI. 

POETRY. 

Its essential Conditions — Freneau and the early Metrical Writers — 
Mumford — Clififton — Allston, and others — Pierpont — Dana — 
Hillhouse — Sprague — Percival — Halleck — Drake — Hofi"man — 
Willis — Longfellow — Holmes — Lowell — Boker — Favorite Single 
Poems — Descriptive Poetry — Street — Whittier, and others — 
Brainard — Song- Writers — Other Poets — Female Poets — Bryant 468 
2 



OUTLINES 

OP 

GENERAL LITERATURE. 



CHAPTER 1. 

THE ENGLISH LANaUAGE. 

Britons — Their Oriental Origin — Csesar's Invasion, B.C. 60 — Traces of the 
Celtic Speech in English — Analysis of English — Saxon Tongue — Disuse of 
Saxon Inflections — The English Th — The English W — Pronunciation — 
Latin Element — Origin of English Language — Norman Conquest — William 
—Monasteries — Twelfth Century — Saxon Chronicle — Norman French — 
Layamon — Thirteenth Ceatury — Robert of Gloucester — Neologism — Four- 
teenth Century — Mannyng — WicklifFe and Chaucer — Gower — Hermit of 
Hampole — Pleadings in English — Trevisa, Translation of Higden — Mande- 
ville — Fifteenth Century — Lydgate — Statutes in English — Sixteenth Cen- 
tury — Reformation — Cheke — Skelton— Surrey and Wyatt — Berners-^ 
Ascham — Spenser — Chaucerism — Euphuism — Seventeenth Century — Pro- 
tectorate — Gallicism — Restoration — Eighteenth Century — Proportion of 
Saxon in English. 

The most ancient inhabitants of the British islands were the Celts, 
Cymry, or Britons, as they are variously styled. That these rude 
and savage tribes were offshoots from the mighty race whose roots 
have struck so deep into the soil of most countries of Western and 
Southern Europe, there can be no doubt. Antiquaries may be un- 
decided as to the origin of this venerable family of mankind, or as to 
the period at which it first migrated into Europe ; but it is impossible 
not to believe that it formed one of the primary divisions of the 
human race ; and there is very strong probability, from many note- 
worthy circumstances, that it originally came from the eastern regions 
of the globe. 

In their mysterious and venerable system of theistic philosophy 
there are to be found so many points of resemblance with various 
recondite doctrines which we know to have been current from the 
remotest ages in the interior of India, that it is very difficult to be- 
lieve such resemblances to be entirely accidental ; particularly when 



26 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. 



[chap. I. 



we reflect that many of these dogmas — the transmigi'ation of the soul, 
for instance — were parts of a creed not at all likely to have arisen 
spontaneously among so rude and savage a people as we know the 
Ce]t« to have been. The extraordinary reverence paid by the Druids 
to the oak ; their adoption of the mistletoe as an emblem of the im- 
mortality of the soul J the peculiar virtues which they attached to the 
number three ; the magic powers which they imagined to reside in 
certain rhythmical and musical combinations ; their addiction to the 
study of astronomy ; and the singular peculiarity of a religious caste 
among them — these, among many other coincidences, would seem to 
claim for the Celts an evident, though perhaps remote, Oriental 
origin : an opinion further strengthened by the analogies which exist 
between some of the most ancient Indian dialects and the language 
of the Britons. 

It was with this singular people that the Romans came in contact ; 
and seldom had Caesar's iron veterans encountered a more desperate 
and obstinate foe. With the history of that long contest we have 
nothing to do at present ; it is sufficient for our purpose to sketch, as 
briefly and rapidly as possible, the results of the struggle. Such of 
the Britons as were spared by the Homan sword, by the not less fatal 
influence of Latin corruption, and the fierce intestine convulsions 
which decimated their ranks, were gradually driven back from the 
southern and central parts of Britain to take refuge in the inaccessi- 
ble fastnesses of their mountains. A glance at the map will suffice 
to explain this; for we shall see the descendants of the ancient British 
race still occupying those parts of the country to which their ancestors 
had retired. In all districts of England and Scotland distinguished 
by any considerable tract of mountains, the Celtic blood has remained 
more or less pure, the Celtic language unchanged, and strong traces 
of the Celtic manners, language, and superstitions still prevail. It 
is, however, singular to remark how invariably the Celtic race has 
continued to diminish wherever it has been exposed to contact with 
the Teutonic tribes : thus the once purely Celtic population of Corn- 
wall has gradually lost its individual character, and has almost ceased 
to exist ; in Wales and in the Highlands of Scotland, two districts in 
which, and particularly in the former, the British blood has been least 
exposed to foreign admixture, the ancient race is yet slowly losing its 
marked peculiarities ; and the day will probably come when the wild 
mountain fastnesses, which formed an insuperable barrier to the 
Roman sword and to the Saxon battle-axe, will have ceased to resist 
the silent spread of Teutonic commerce and Teutonic civilization. 

The fate of the Celtic race in Britain has somewhat resembled that 
of the aboriginal tribes of the American continents : slowly but surely 
have they retired and contracted before the invading nations ; and 
possibly in future ages the harp of the Bard and the claymore of the 
Sennachie will be picturesque but unsubstantial recolleations, such 



CHAP. I.] TRACES OF CELTIC SPEECH IN ENGLISH. 



27 



as exist of the feathered tunic of the Mexitlan or the chivalric scalping- 
tuft of the Sioux. 

Words are the pictures or reflections of things ; and the genius, 
character, and capabilities of a nation can in no way be so well studied 
as in its language. From the earliest periods of our history the 
Celtic race has existed over the whole or a notable portion of the 
British islands; the British language, and, in some cases, no other, ' 
is spoken over a considerable extent of these countries — in Wales, in 
the Highlands of Scotland, in Ireland, and in the Isle of Man ; some 
among these tribes possess large collections of very ancient and curious 
poems written in the respective dialects of the great Celtic speech ; 
and yet, notwithstanding all this, the number of Celtic words Which 
have taken root in the English language is so incrediby small that 
it can hardly be said to have exerted any influence whateyer on the 
composite speech now used in the country. A large proportion, too, 
even of these scanty transplantations has taken place at a compara- 
tively recent period, and the words so adopted have generally been 
transferred by poets and writers of fiction — Scott, for example — who 
found the Celtic expression either more picturesque and forcible than 
the equivalent which already existed in English (of Norman or Saxon 
origin), or else a lively and characteristic image for some object or 
idea peculiarly Celtic. Of the former kind we may adduce the words 
" cairn^^ " cromlech^^' and of the latter the word " clan." " Clan," 
it is evident, expresses an idea so exclusively Celtic that it forms a 
perfect and untranslatable sign of that idea; while cairn,' ^ though 
by no means peculiar to the Celts, and defining a mode of honourable 
burial universal in former ages (as testified by the xo-fJ-^i of the Grreek 
heroic age, by the tumulus of the Etruscan peoples, and by the bar- 
rows of the Teutons), was nevertheless adopted as being a more local 
and exact image of the same hero-burial among the Celts. 

With regard to the paucity of Celtic words which have retained a 
place in modern English, a Russian would remark something analo^ 
gous in the history of his own language. The Tartars, in spite of 
two centuries and a half of complete and universal domination in 
Russia, have left hardly any traces of their language in the present 
Slavonic dialect of Russia; and the few words of Tartar origin that 
might be cited generally express articles of dress, equipment, food, 
&c., for which the Russians had no proper equivalent. In this case 
too we may note the difference of circumstances which tended to pre- 
vent any fusion between the conquered and conquerors : the abhor- 
rence with which the Russian people — always extremely bigoted — 
regarded rapacious and haughty oppressors of a different religion, and 
of utterly barbarous habits. It is to be remarked, too, that the Tartar 
language is destitute of any literature at all comparable, in point of 
richness or antiquity, to the Celtic poems— a barrenness which the 
Russian must have contrasted with his own majestic, flexible; and 
9 * 



28 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. 



[CHAP. I. 



abundant idiom. Compare with this scanty and meagre transfusion 
of Tartar words the immense and permanent influence of the Moors 
upon the language, sentiment, and character of Spain, during the 
glorious dominion of the Mahommedans in Granada, and we shall 
see that, while the Moorish or Arab element forms an integral, per- 
manent, and essential ingredient in the language of the country, the 
communication between the conquering and conquered nations must 
be rated, in the case of Britain and of Russia, so much lower as to 
be considered comparatively insignificant. 

During the Koman occupation of the isles of Britain — an occupa- 
tion which extended over a period of 470 years, i. e. from 60 B.C. to 
A.D. 410 — there can be no doubt but that a considerable part of the 
indigenous population submitted to the victorious invaders, and con- 
tinued to occupy their estates in the Roman provinces of Britain, 
paying tribute, as was natural, to the Roman government. We know, 
too, that the officers and soldiers of the Roman legions permanently 
stationed in Britain freely intermixed, and even allied themselves, 
by marriage and otherwise, with the now half-civilized British popu- 
lation which surrounded their military posts; and we may conse- 
quently speculate upon what would have been the consequence had 
they continued to maintain their footing in Britain. In the process 
of time there would have arisen a new mixed population, partaking 
in some measure of the qualities, of the blood, and perhaps also of 
the vices, of its double origin ; and, what is of more importance to 
our present subject, the language spoken at the present day by the 
descendants of such a Creole race would have resembled the French 
or the Spanish ; that is to say, it would have been a dialect bearing 
the physiognomic character of some one of the numerous Romanz 
languages, all of which are the result of efibrts, more or less success- 
ful, of a rude Celtic or Graulish nation to speak the Latin, with which 
they were only acquainted by practice and by the ear. 

In this barbarous, but useful and improvable dialect, some words 
of the ancient Gaulish or Celtic would remain; and in point of 
proximity to the Latin — its fundamental element — it would resemble 
the language of classical Rome to a greater or to a less degree exactly 
in proportion as the communication with the Romans was closer or 
more relaxed. Further, if the language of the conquerors happened 
to be, as was the case with that of Rome, an inflected and highly 
artificial tongue, the new dialect would be distinguished, like the 
modern French or the Italian, by an almost universal suppression of 
all inflected terminations indicating the various modifications of 
meaning, which modifications would thereafter be expressed by inde- 
pendent particles — by prepositions, by pronouns, by auxiliary verbs. 

But the supposition which has just been made was not to be verified 
in the modern language of the country : such a species of corrupt 
Latinity was not destined to become in our times the spoken dialect 



CHAP. I.] TRACES OF CELTIC SPEECH IN ENGLISH. 2# 

of the British islands ; and, small as is the influence npon our present 
speech of the pure Celtic aboriginal tongue, the corruption of that 
tongue by the admixture of Latin (or rather the corruption of the 
Latin by the admixture of Celtic forms) was to be no less complete- 
ly supplanted by new invasions; and by new languages originating in 
different and distant regions. It is undoubtedly obvious that a very 
large part of the modern English vocabulary, and even many forms 
of English grammar, are to be traced to the llomanz dialect, and 
therefore must be considered as having arisen from a corrupted La- 
tinity, such as we have been describing as likely to have been em- 
ployed by Gallic or Celtic tribes imperfectly acquainted with Latin. 
It would, however, be a fatal mistake to consider that these, or even 
any part of them, came from any such Romanz dialect or lingua 
franca ever spoken originally in Britain. They are, and without 
any exception, 7iot of British growth, but were introduced into the 
English language after the Norman invasion of the country in 1066. 

We have said that the traces existing in the modern English of 
the aboriginal Celtic are exceeding few and faint : it is, however, 
proper to except one class of words — we allude to the names of places. 
In the long period of anarchy and bloodshed which intervened be- 
tween the departure of the Romans and the arrival of the Saxon 
hordes in 449, and the gradual foundation in England of the Eight 
Kingdoms, the country must be conceived to have gone back rather 
than advanced in the career of civilization. The Saxons, we know, 
who were during a long period incessantly at war, as the Romans had 
been before them, with the Picts, the Scots, and the Welsh, strenu- 
ously endeavored to obliterate every trace of the ancient language, 
even from the geography of the regions they had conquered : and it 
is singular to observe an Anglo-Saxon king, himself the member of 
a nation not very far removed from its ancient rudeness and ferocity, 
stigmatising as barbarous the British name of a spot to which he had 
occasion to allude, as known " harharico nomine Pendyfig," by the 
barbarous — this was the British — name of Pendyfig. National 
hatred is perhaps the longest-lived of all things : and it is curious to 
observe the mutual dislike and contempt still existing between the 
Celtic and the Saxon race, and the Irish peasant of the present day 
expressing, in words which 1300 years have not deprived of their 
original bitterness, his detestation of the Sassenagh — the Saxon. A 
moment's inspection of the map of England will show the immense 
number of places which have retained, in whole or in part, their 
original Celtic form : we may instance the terminating syllable don 
with which many of these names conclude, and which is the Celtic 
dun, signifying a fortified rock. The Irish Kil, which begins so 
many names of places, is nothing more than a corruption of the Celtic 
Caille, signifying a forest ; and the Caer, frequently found in the 
beginning of Welsh^ Cornish, and Armorican names, and which the 



30 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. I. 



Bretons have so often preserved in the initial syllable Ker (as 
Kerhoet), is evidently nothing but CaeVj the rock or stone. 

From what has been suggested, then, upon the subject of the 
Celtic language, the reader will conclude that, for all practical pur- 
poses of analogy or of derivation, it has exerted no appreciable influ- 
ence on the modern speech of the country. Some few words indeed 
have been adopted into English frqm the tongue of the aboriginal 
possessors of the country, but so few in number, and so unimportant 
in signification, that it will be found to have borrowed as much from 
the language of Portugal, nay, even from those of China and Hin- 
dostan, as it has derived from the ancient indigenous tongue. 

The English language, then, viewed with reference to its compo- 
nent elements, must be considered as a mixture of the Saxon and of 
the Romanz or corrupted Roman of the middle ages : and before we 
can proceed to investigate the peculiar character, genius, and history 
of such a composite dialect, it will be essential to establish with some 
degree of correctness — first, in what proportions these two elements 
are found in the compound substance under consideration ; and second, 
what were the periods and what were the influences during and 
through which the process of amalgamation took place. 

In examining the relative proportions of two or more elements 
forming together a new dialect, it would certainly be a very simple 
and unphilosophical analysis which should consist of simply counting 
the various vocables in a dictionary and arranging them under the 
various languages from which they are derived, then striking a balance 
between them, and assigning as the true origin of the language the 
dialect to which the greater number should be found to belong. No; 
we must pay some attention to the nature and significance of the 
vocables themselves, and also to the degree of primitiveness and 
antiquity of their meaning ; nor must we neglect, in particular, to 
take into the account the general form and analogies of the composite 
language viewed as a whole. It is evident that that dialect must be 
the primitive or radical one from which are derived the greatest 
number of vocables expressing the simpler ideas and the most uni- 
versally known objects — such objects and ideas, in short, as cannot 
but possess equivalents in every human speech, however rude its 
state or imperfect its development. 

Following this important rule, we shall find that all the primary 
ideas, and all the simpler objects, natural and artificial, are expressed 
in English by words so evidently of Teutonic origin — nay, so slightly 
varied from Teutonic forms — that a knowledge of the German will 
render them instantly intelligible and recognizable. Such for instance, 
are the words "man," "woman'^ (wif-man; i. e. female man), "sun," 
"moon," "earth;'' the names of the simpler colours, as "green," 
"red," "yellow" (note that "purple" — a compound colour — is de- 
rived from the Greek), "brown,'' &c. ; the commoner and simpler 



CHAP. I.] 



SAXON TONGUE. 



31 



acts of life, "to run/^ "to fly," " to eat," " to sing," &c. ; the prima- 
ry and fundamental passions of our nature, and the verbs which ex- 
press those passions as in activity, "love,'^ "fear,^' "hate," &c. ; the 
names of the ordinary animals and their cries, as "horse," "hound," 
"sheep,'' "to neigh," "to bark," "to bleat,'' "to low," &c. ; the 
arts and employments, the trades and dignities of life, "to read," "to 
write," "seamen,'' "king," "miller," "earl," "queen," &c. ; and 
the most generally known among artificial objects, as "house," 
"boat," " door." It is worthy of remark how universally applicable 
is this principle of antiquity or primitiveness : thus, those religious 
objects and ideas which are of the simplest and most obvious charac- 
ter are represented in English by words derived from the Teutonic 
dialects, while the more complicated and artificial — what we may call 
the scientific or technic — portion of the religious vocabulary, is almost 
in every case of Latin or Grreek derivation : thus, "Grod," "fiend," 
"wicked," "righteous," "hell," "faith," "hope," &c., are all pure 
Saxon words; while "predestination," "justification," "baptism," 
&c., will generally be found to come from other sources. So gener- 
ally, indeed, is this principle observable in the English language, 
that we may in most cases decide, d priori, whether the equivalent 
for a given object or idea be a Saxon or a Latin word, by observing 
whether that object be a primitive and simple or a complex and arti- 
ficial one. 

It must not, however, be infeiTed from this that the Saxon lan- 
guage was a rude and uncultivated mode of speech : such a notion 
would be in the highest degree unjust and unfounded. Like all the 
languages of the Teutonic stock, the Anglo-Saxon was distinguished 
for its singular vigour, expressiveness, and exactness, and in particu- 
lar for the great facilities it afi"orded for the formation of compound 
words. 

We may remark that most of the Saxon compound words have 
ceased to exist in the modern English : in short, the tendency of our 
remarks is to show, not that the Saxon was incapable of expressing 
even the most complex and refined ideas, but that, by a curious 
fatality, those words have generally given place, in the tongue of the 
present day, to equivalents drawn from the Latin and Grreek origins. 
That this substitution (for which we shall endeavor to assign a reason) 
of Latin and Greek derivatives for words of Saxon stock has been 
injurious in some cases to the expressiveness, and in all to the vigour, 
of the modern idiom, no one can deny who compares the distinctness 
of the older words, in which all the elements would be known to an 
English peasant, with the somewhat pedantic and far-fetched equiva- 
lents : for instance, how much more picturesque, and, let us add, in- 
telligible, are the words "mildheartedness," "deathsman," "moon- 
ling," than the corresponding "mercifulness/' "executioner," and 
" lunatic" ! 



32 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. I. 



But perhaps the most singular transformation undergone by the 
Saxon language, in the course of ifs becoming the basis of the English, 
is the annihilation of all, or nearly all, its inflections. The tongue of 
our Saxon ancestors was distinguished, like the modern German — 
one of the offshoots of the same great parent stock — by a considera- 
ble degree of grammatical complexity ; it possessed its declensions, 
its cases, its numbers, and in particular its genders of substantive and 
adjective, indicated by terminations, as in almost all the languages 
ever spoken on the earth. 

The whole of this elaborate apparatus has been rejected in our 
present speech, in the same manner as a great portion of it has been 
rejected by the Italian, Spanish, and French languages in their pro- 
cess of descent from the Latin. The English language presents, 
therefore, the singular phenomenon of a dialect derived from two 
distinct sources, each characterized by peculiarities of inflection, yet 
itself absolutely or nearly without any traces of the method of inflec- 
tion prevalent in either the one or the other of those sources. 

Among the singularities of the English pronunciation which place, 
as it were, upon the threshold of the language so many unexpected 
obstacles in the way of the foreigner, there are two or three always 
found peculiar difficulties by all, and particularly by Germans, who 
discover, in other respects, so many analogies between their language 
and our own. These are, among others, the sound, or rather the two 
distinct sounds, of the th. A very little explanation would suffice to 
render at all events the theoretical part of this difficulty very easy and 
intelligible to them ; for they would then discover that the th which 
they so bitterly complain of represents the sound of two different and 
distinct letters in the Saxon alphabet, which were most injudiciously 
suppressed, their place being supplied by the combination th, which 
exists in almost all the European languages, but which is pronounced 
in none of them as in the English. The Saxon letters in question 
are ^ and p, and are nothing more than 8 and t (the Saxon d and 
t) followed by an aspirate, indicated by the cross line ; and which 
are both most absurdly represented in English by th, the pronuncia- 
tion of which varies, as in the words " this^' and " thin to assign 
the right sound being an effort of memory in the learner. Now the 
Saxon words in which is found the character are almost invariably 
observed to exist in German with the simple t), and those containing 

with either b or t!) ; a circumstance tending strongly to prove that 
it is the Germans who have lost the ancient aspirated sound of the 
two letters or combinations (for it is of no consequence whether they 
were anciently written by the Germans with one character or two), 
and that, consequently, the English alone, of all the Teutonic races, 
have preserved the true ancient pronunciation in this particular. 
The same conclusion may be arrived at, we think not unfairly, with 
reference to the English w, the letter corresponding to which in Ger- 



CHAP. I.] 



DISUSE OF SAXON INFLECTIONS. 



33 



man, viz. tt), seems to have lost not only its true name, but also, 
which is of much more importance, even its correct sound.* 

If the German pronunciation of vo be the correct and original one, 
either the » or the f is a superfluous and unnecessary letter. We 
think it, therefore, not improbable that in this, as well as in the pre- 
ceding instance, it is the English language alone which, in spite of a 
thousand fluctuations and a thousand caprices in orthography and 
etymology, has preserved the genuine pronunciation of these very 
important letters : we say very important, for it is only sufficient to 
reflect on the immense number of words in German, English, and, in 
short, all the Teutonic languages into the structure of which enter 
one or the other of these letters, to be convinced that the th, the c?, 
and the w play a most considerable part. 

The pronunciation of every language must obviously depend prin- 
cipally upon the sounds assigned to the various vowels, and consc" 
quently the learner, when he finds that in English almost all the 
vowels have a name and a power totally difi'erent from what they bear 
in all other tongues, is apt to lose all courage, and to despair of using, 
in the acquisition of English, the most powerful instrument with 
which he can be armed 3 namely, the analogy existing between the 
original and the derived dialects. He finds, for instance, that the 
English vowels a, e, i, and w, have quite different names and sounds 
from the same characters in French and German ; and his ear, per- 
petually tantalised by analogies of sound which do not exist, is very 
apt to become incapable of perceiving those which do. So generally, 
indeed, is this difficulty experienced, that it may be laid down as an 
almost universal principle, that in all words derived from a foreign 
source, and naturalized in the English vocabulary, one of two results 
is invariably found to take place ; viz. either the pronunciation of 
the original word is changed, or its orthography ; in other terms, the 
word is made to submit either to the pronunciation of the English 
letters, when its original spelling is retained, or the spelling is altered, 
so as to make another combination of English letters express the 
original sound of the word. In the case, however, of derivatives 
from languages of the Teutonic stock, these changes of orthography 
ought by no means to be considered as involving such great difficulty 
as is generally attributed to them; and in a majority of cases they 
will be found much less capricious than is usually supposed. One 
considerable portion of the above difficulty arises from the circum- 
stance that there exists in German a much greater number of dipth- 
thongal combinations than have been retained, in a written form, in 
the English ; and thus we are frequently obliged to represent such 
combinations by means of our limited number of vowels, in giving 



The Germans pronounce w as v in English. 



34 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE, 



[CHAP. I. 



to the same vowels a different power, and consequently assigning to 
each letter a number of distinct and often very dissimilar sounds. 

As an example of this, let us take the word SDJann, which is 
so faithfully reflected in the English man, that the identity of 
meaning in the two cases is instantly and inevitably perceived ; in 
the plural, however, of the English form, the a of the singular is 
changed into e, forming an exception to the usual manner of express- 
ing the plural of a substantive by the addition of s. Now it is obvi- 
ous that the e of the plural number of the word men is nothing else 
than an attempt to represent in English the somewhat complicated 
combination of vowels in the German plural 93Jdnner, i. e. maennevj 
of which sound the English e, though not an ecact, yet is the best 
representation of which the case would admit. Of this kind of re- 
presentation the examples are innumerable, and they will go far to 
explain, if not to palliate, the alleged caprice of the English pronun- 
ciation. Again, in that multitude of words which exist in nearly 
similar forms (though it must be confessed under great differences in 
point of pronunciation) in the French and English languages, and 
which have a common Latin origin, it will be universally found that, 
however great be the difference of pronunciation, the orthography in 
the English form is in general so little changed from the original 
Latin as to be immediately recognizable. Indeed, it is very curious 
to remark that the orthography of almost the whole of this large class 
of words is in English absolutely much more correct — that is, much 
closer to the Latin — than in the French, the Italian, or even than in 
the Spanish itself ] so much so indeed as to induce a linguistic student 
unacquainted with the history of the language rather to suppose that 
these words came into modern English either directly from the Latin, 
or that they were incorporated into our speech through some separate 
and independent channel, than that they had been (as they undoubt- 
edly were) first filtered, so to speak, through the French and Italian 
idioms. It is strange that this large stream of words seems to have 
purified itself from foreign admixtures as it descended from the 
antique Latin through the various Romanz idioms which have become 
the several languages of modern Europe; so much so, that the Latin 
words in our present speech may be said, at least as far as their 
orthography is concerned, to have reached among us a greater purity 
than they have in French, Italian, or even in Spanish. 

" Nothing can be more difficult," says the judicious and accurate 
Hallam, than to determine, except by an arbitrary line, the com- 
mencement of the English language; not so much, as in those of the 
continent, because we are in want of materials, but rather from an 
opposite reason — the possibility of tracing a very gradual succession 
of verbal changes that ended in a change of denomination. For 
when we compare the earliest English of the thirteenth century with 
the Anglo-Saxon of the twelfth, it seems hard to pronounce why it 



CHAP. I.] 



LATIN ELEMENT. 



35 



sHould pass for a separate language, rather than a modification or 
simplification of the former. We must conform, however, to usage, 
and say that the Anglo-Saxon was converted into English — 1, by 
contracting or otherwise modifying the pronunciation and orthogra- 
phy of words; 2, by omitting many inflections, especially of the noun, 
and consequently making more use of articles and auxiliaries ; 3, by 
the introduction of French derivatives; 4, by using less inversion and 
ellipsis, especially in poetry. Of these, the second alone, I think, 
can be considered as sufl&cient to describe a new form of language ; 
and this was brought about so gradually, that we are not relieved of 
much of our difficulty, whether some compositions shall pass for the 
latest offspring of the mother, or the earliest fruits of the fertility of 
the daughter.'^ 

With respect to this excellent and comprehensive judgment, it is 
only necessary to remark, that in tracing practically the application 
to the English language of the first of these processes by which 
Hallam explains the gradual transition from the Anglo-Saxon into 
English, they are found universally taking place in the transforma- 
tion of an inflected into an uninflected language, or even into one less 
completely and regularly inflected : a very long list has been made, 
nay, an almost complete vocabulary might be compiled, of words in 
the French language which difier from their Latin roots only in their 
having lost the final syllable, expressive in the lloman tongue, of 
case, of gender, or of tense. A very few instances will suffice : if we 
compare, for example, the old French horn and horns with the Latin 
liom-o and hom-ines, we shall find that only as much of the Roman 
inflection has been retained as was indispensable to the required dis- 
tinction of singular and plural. In other respects the word was trun- 
cated — and it is of no consequence whether this contraction took 
place gradually or suddenly — until nothing remains but the significant 
or radical syllable horn. 

In tracing from the momentous epoch of the Norman invasion the 
gradual developement of the English language, it will be by no means 
necessary to enter into any very minute details of philological archae- 
ology : our task will be more agreeably, and certainly not less profita- 
bly fulfilled, if we content ourselves with accompanying,' with due 
reverence and a natural admiration, the advance of that noble lan- 
guage along the course of centuries : we shall see it, springing from 
the distant sources of barbarous and unpolished but free and vigorous 
generations, at one time rolling harshly, like a mountain streamlet, 
over the rugged bed of Saxon antiquity, then slowly and steadily 
gliding onward in a calmer and more majestic swell, receiving into 
its bosom a thousand tributary currents, from the wild mountains of 
Scandinavia, from the laughing valleys of Provence and Languedoc, 
from the storied plains of Italy or the haunted shores of Greece, from 
the sierras of Andalusia and the Moorish vegas of Granada — till, 
3 



86 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. I. 



broadening and strengthening as it rolls, it bears upon its immeasura- 
ble breast the solidest treasures of human wisdom and the fairest 
harvests of poesy and wit. 

It is by no means to be supposed that the invasion of the Normans 
under William was the first point of contact between the Saxon and 
French races in England, and that it is to that event that we must 
attribute the first fusion : on the contrary, it is well established that 
for a long time previous to this epoch the nobles and the court of 
England had afiected to imitate French fashions, and even sent their 
youth to be partially educated in the latter country. Between the 
sovereign houses of Grreat Britain and Normandy, in particular, there 
were too many relations of blood and alliance of ancient standing to 
allow us to be surprised at this. This imitation of French customs, 
dress, and language was not likely to be very palatable to the English 
of the pure Anglo-Saxon stock, and we accordingly find that a good 
deal of ridicule was cast by the lower orders on such of their coun- 
trymen as showed too great a taste for the manners of the other side 
of the Strait of Dover. They had a species of proverbial saying 
with respect to such followers of outlandish fashions, which is not 
destitute of a certain drollery and salt: Jacke," they said, "woud 
be a gentilman if he coud bot speke Frenshe." It is known, too, 
that in the first part of his English sovereignty William had in vain 
exhausted his patience and fatigued his ear in the attempt to learn 
the Anglo-Saxon language ; and it was not until after his return 
from Normandy, after a nine months' absence from England, that he 
began to employ, for the suppression of the language and nationality 
of his new kingdom, those severe measures which have rendered his 
name so memorable. It would be superfluous to allude to these at 
any length; the institution of the curfew, the forced employment 
of the Norman language in all public acts and pleadings, the com- 
pulsory teaching of Norman in the schools — all these are well-known 
measures, and sufficiently prove William's conviction that no hope 
was left of subduing the national obstinacy by fair or gentle means, 
and that nothing remained but proscription and violence. 

In spite of these ominous proceedings, however, the sacred flame 
of letters was still kept alive in the monasteries : the superiors of 
these institutions, it is true, were almost universally changed, the 
recalcitrant Saxons being displaced to make way for Norman eccle- 
siastics, but under the monk's gown there often beat the stern Saxon 
heart, and the labouring brain was often working with patriotic fer- 
vour under the unmarked cowl. The chroniclers of this period were 
in many cases Saxons, and in their rude but picturesque narratives 
we find the most ineffaceable marks of the hatred felt by the great 
body of the nation against the haughty conquerors. In these mo- 
nasteries were taught rhetoric, theology, physic, the civil and canon 
law ; and it is in them also that were nursed the school divinity and 



CHAP. I.] 



SAXON CHRONICLE, 1150. 



37 



dialectics whicli form so striking a feature in the intellectual physiog- 
nomy of the middle ages. 

The year 1150 is generally assigned as the epoch at which the 
Saxon language began that process of transformation or corruption 
by which it was ultimately changed into English. This change, as 
we have specified above, was not the effect of the Norman invasion, 
for hardly any new accession of French words is perceptible in it for 
at least a hundred years from this time : it may be remarked that 
some few French words had crept in before this period, and also a 
considerable Latinising tendency may be remarked ; but the changes 
of which we are speaking are rather of form than of matter, and are 
generally referable to one or other of the various causes which have 
been assigned a few pages back in the clear and emphatic words of 
Hallara. 

In the year 1150 the Saxon Chronicle — that venerable monument 
of English history — comes to an abrupt conclusion. This chronicle 
(or rather series of chronicles, for it was evidently continued by a 
great number of different writers, and exhibits an immense variety 
of style and language) is intended to give an account of the English 
annals from A. D. 1 ; and though the earlier portion, as might be 
expected, is filled with trivial and improbable fables, the accuracy 
and importance of the work, as a historical document, becomes im- 
measurably greater as it approaches the period when it was discon- 
tinued ; the description of the more recent events, and the portraits 
of contemporary personages, bearing in many cases evident marks 
of being the production of men who had been the eyewitnesses of 
what they paint. 

The French language was still spoken at court; and there is a 
curious anecdote exemplifying the profound ignorance of our English 
kings respecting the language and manners of the larger portion of 
their subjects. We read that Henry II., who ascended the throne 
in 1154, having been once addressed by a number of his own subjects 
during a journey into Pembrokeshire, in a harangue commencing with 
the words "Good Olde Kynge V* he turned to his courtiers for an 
interpretation of these words, whose meaning was totally unknown 
to him. 

Towards the latter end of this century, viz. in 1180, Layamon 
wrote his translation of Wace's metrical legendary romance of Brut ; 
and nothing will give a more distinct idea of the difficulty encoun- 
tered by philologists in fixing the exact period at which the Saxon 
merged into the English, than the great variety of d^isions founded 
upon the style of this work ; some of our most learned antiquarians, 
among whom is the accomplished George Ellis, deciding that the 
language of Layamon is " a simple and unmixed, though very bar- 
barous Saxon,'' while others, who are followed by Campbell, consider 
it to be the first dawning or daybreak of English. Where so learned 



38 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. I. 



and accurate a person as Ellis has hesitated, it becomes every one to 
avoid anything like dogmatism ; but the truth probably is, that the 
language of Layamon is to be considered either as late Saxon or as 
very early English, according as the philologist is inclined to attribute 
the change from one language into the other to a modification taking 
place in the form or in the matter of the Saxon speech. 

At the beginning of the reign of Henry III., in 1216, the English 
language had made considerable progress, though it had not even yet 
begun to be spoken at court : and it must be regarded at this period 
as a harsh but vigorous and expressive idiom, containing in itself the 
seeds or capabilities of future perfection. This century, too, is cha- 
racterised by the circumstance of Latin having begun to fall into 
disuse ; the learned adopting their vernacular language as a medium 
for their thoughts. The increasing neglect of the Latin is to be 
attributed to the secret but extensive spread of those doctrines which 
afterwards took consistency at the Reformation. Recent investiga- 
tions have assigned to one very curious monument of old English a 
different and much earlier date than had been previously fixed for it : 
we allude to the beautiful song beginning " Sumer ys ycumen in," 
&c. This venerable relic has been usually attributed to the fifteenth 
century, but there can be little doubt as to its being really the pro- 
duction of the thirteenth. It was probably composed about the year 
1250, and the language, when divested of its ancient and uncouth 
spelling, differs so little from the English of the present day as to 
have caused the error to which we have alluded. About 1280 was 
written the work of Robert of Gloucester, and it is extraordinary to 
observe how great a change had taken place between this time and 
the appearance of Layamon, a hundred years earlier. We are now 
rapidly approaching a period when the language may be said to have 
acquired some solidity ; for at the beginning of the following century 
we find complaints in a great multitude of writers against neologism 
and innovations in language — an infallible sign that some standard, 
however imperfect, and some rules, however capricious, had begun 
to be applied to the idiom — now rapidly rising into a written, and 
consequently regular, language. In the year 1303, Robert Man- 
nyng, in his ' Handlyng of Sinne,' an English translation of Bishop 
Grosteste's ^Manuel des Pes Pesches,^ protests repeatedly against 
foreign and outlandish innovations : I seke,'^ says this venerable 
purist, " no straunge Yuglyss." In what consisted the innovations 
against which he desires to guard — whether the "strange English'' 
was corrupted l5y an admixture of French words, of Latinisms, or of 
Grecisms — it is obviously very difiicult to ascertain. This century 
is one of the most important in the history of the literature, and 
consequently in that of the language also. It was in this century 
that Wickliffe, in popularising religion, tended also so powerfully to 
popularise language : it was in this century, too, that the Father of 



CHAP. I.] 



FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 



English Literature, the immortal Chaucer himself, introduced the 
elegance, the harmony, the learning, and the taste of the infant 
Italian muse, assimilating and digesting, by the healthy energy of 
genius, what he took, not as a plagiarist, but as a conqueror, from 
Petrarca and from Boccaccio. ' Gower, too, who was born shortly 
before the year 1340, mainly helped to polish and refine the language 
of his country; and though, for want of that vivifying and pre- 
serving quality, that sacred particle of flame, which we designate by 
the word genius, his works are now obsolete, and consulted less for 
any merit of their own than to illustrate his great contemporary, the 
smoothness and art of his versification had doubtless a considerable 
influence in developing and perfecting the language. It was in the 
reign of Edward III. that the Lombard character was first disused in 
charters and public acts, and to this reign also must be assigned the 
oldest instrument known to exist in the English language. In the 
middle of this century wrote Richard Rolle, the Hermit of Hampole, 
in whose dull ethical poem, the ' Prikke of Conscience,' ' Stimulus 
Conscientiae' — we find the same dread of innovation that was ex- 
pressed forty years earlier by Robert Mannyng, or Robert de 
Brunne, as he was otherwise denominated. The Hermit of Hampole 
exhibits the strongest desire to make himself intelligible to lewed or 
unlearned folk : I seke no straunge Inglyss, bot lightest and com- 
munest." We cannot pass this epoch without an allusion to Lang- 
lande's ^Vision of Piers Plowman,' a long and rather confused 
allegorical poem, containing many striking invectives against the 
corruptions of the Romish priesthood, and in particular a most 
singular prophecy of the severities which were afterwards exercised 
against the monastic orders by Henry VIII. at the suppression of 
the religious houses. In 1350, or about that year, the character 
called Old English, or Black Letter, was first used ; and though the 
language of this period was disfigured by the most barbarous and 
capricious orthography, it is surprising how similar it is, in point of 
structure and intelligibleness, to the English of the present day. 

Twelve years after this, by the wisdom and patriotism of King 
Edward III., the pleadings before the tribunals were restored to the 
vernacular language — an irrefragable proof of the universal preva- 
lence of the native speech, and of the diminished influence of the 
Norman French. It is curious to remark how absolutely identical 
has remained the speech of the mob even from so remote a period to 
the present day. The following is a passage from a species of 
political pasquinade disseminated in the year 1382, and gives a very 
fair specimen of the popular language of the day : we have mo- 
dernized the spelling ; and, with this precaution, there is not a word 
or an expression which differs materially from the language of the 
people in the nineteenth century : — " Jack Carter prays you all that 
you make a good end of that ye have begun, and do well, and still 



40 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. I. 



better and better ; for at the even men near the day. If the end be 
well, then all is well. Let Piers the ploughman dwell at home, and 
dight (prepare) us corn. Look that Hobbe the robber be well chas- 
tised. Stand manly together in truth, and help the truth, and the 
• truth shall help you." 

In 1385 the Latin chronicle of Higden (attributed to the year 
1365) was translated into English by John de Trevisa. It appears 
that, in the interval which had elapsed since the original was written, 
the custom of making children in grammar-schools translate their 
Latin into French had been, principally through the patriotic efforts 
of a certain Sir John Cornewaill, almost universally discontinued : 
" so that now," to use the words of Trevisa, " the yere of our Lorde 
1385, in all the grammere scoles of Engelond, children leaveth 
Frensche, and construeth and lerneth in Englische." 

Another strong proof of the growing spread and importance of 
the English language at this period is to be found in the circumstance 
that our earliest traveller. Sir John Mandeville, who had written in 
Latin and in French the interesting account of his long wanderings, 
should have thought fit to give to the world an English version of 
the same curious work. 

In his translation of Higden, Trevisa avoids what he calls " the 
old and ancient Englische;" and the same author gives a most 
terrifying description of the barbarous dialects and pronunciation 
prevalent in the remoter parts of the country. " Some use," says he, 
in words ludicrously responsive to the sounds he describes, " strange 
wlaffing, chytryng, barring, garring, and grysbytyng. The languages 
of the Northumbres, and specyally at Yorke, is so sharpe, slytyng, 
frotyng, and unshape, that we sothern men may unnethe (hardly) 
undirstonde that language." And even to the present day the inhabi- 
tants (even in neighbouring counties) of distant and retired or " up- 
landish" districts can hardly understand each other's speech. Accor- 
ding to the learned Kitson, the year 1388 was signalised by the 
restoration to the English language of parliamentary proceedings — a 
great and important advance for the vernacular idiom : and a singular 
circumstance, bearing a similar tendency, is to be remarked in the 
fact that both the present king, Henry IV., and his son and succes- 
sor, Henry Y., made their wills in English, a thing certainly not 
customary among the nobles of the period : the conduct therefore of 
the two sovereigns proves that they were desirous of setting an 
example of a more general use of the language of the people. 

Henry V. ascendeded the throne in 1413, and he ever exhibited 
an enlightened care of the national language ; a care worthy of the 
heroic sovereign who had so splendidly illustrated his reign by his 
achievements in France. The Victor of Azincour appears to have 
fostered and protected the language of his country. There still 
exists a letter addressed by this great sovereign to the Company of 



CHAP. I.] 



SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 



41 



Brewers in London, containing the following remarkable expressions : 
" The English tongue hath in modern days begun to be honourably 
enlarged and adorned, and for the better understanding of the people 
the common idiom is to be exercised in writing.^' It also appears 
by the same document that many of the craft to whom the letter is - 
addressed " had knowledge of reading and writing in the English 
tongue, but Latin and French they by no means understood.'^ Here, 
then, we see the revolution gradually becoming complete, and the 
English idiom finally succeeding in supplanting, at least for the 
common business of life, the French and the Latin. 

In the following century, and at the beginning of the reign of 
Henry YL, flourished the poet Lydgate, and also the learned Sir John 
Fortescue, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, one of the first impor- 
tant prose-writers in the language. King James of Scotland, who holds 
an honourable place among English poets, was assassinated at Perth 
in the year 1437. The language must still be considered as advanc- 
ing, in spite of the civil contentions which agitated England during 
a considerable part of this century. We may remark that the Gothic 
letters ceased to be used during this period ; and in 1483, at the 
beginning of the reign of Richard III., the statutes were recorded 
in English, having been till now written in the Norman French. 
As an example of the gradual change that had taken place in the 
language, we may mention the fact tliat Caxton modernised Trevisa 
in 1487 — Trevisa, who had himself, just a hundred years before, so 
strenuously endeavoured to avoid the old English : " thus the whirli- 
gig of time," as the Clown says in 'Twelfth Night,' "brings about 
his revenges." 

In 1509 commenced the long and eventful reign of Henry VIII., 
and the recognition, on the part of the sovereign and the govern- 
ment, of the principles of the Reformation. The court, as well as 
the nation in general, was distinguished in this age for learning and 
intellectual activity ; and we find a very considerable advance in the 
cultivation of the vernacular language. Among the remarkable men 
who adorned this period it would be impossible to omit mentioning 
Sir John Cheke, who first introduced into England a profound and 
enlightened study of the Greek language. 

Cheke is also entitled to the grateful memory of after generations 
by the wise and accurate attention which he paid himself, and incul- 
cated upon others, to the purity of his own language. One of the 
most curious and valuable specimens of the writing and criticism of 
this time is a letter written by him to his friend Hoby, containing 
remarks upon the latter's translation of the ' Cortegiano' of Castigli- 
one, a very favourite book of this period. "VVe cannot forbear quoting 
a few passages from this excellent composition of Cheke, as well on 
account of the weight and value of the sentiments, as on that of the 
language in which they are conveyed. It should be remarked that 



42 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. T. 



Sir Thomas Hoby bad requested Cbeke's opinion of bis work : — 
" Our own tongue sbould be written clean and pure, unmixed and 
unmangled with borrowing of other tongues; wherein, if we take 
not heed, by time, ever borrowing and never paying, she shall be 
fain to keep her house as bankrupt. For then doth our tongue 
naturally and praisably utter her meaning when she borroweth no 
counterfeitness of other tongues to attire herself withal; but used 
plainly her own, with such shift as nature, craft, experience, and 
following of other excellent, doth lead her unto ; and if she wants at 
any time (as, being huperfect, she must), yet let her borrow with 
such bashfulness that it may appear that, if either the mould of our 
own tongue could serve us to fashion a word of our own, or if the 
old denizened words could content and ease this need, we would not 
boldly venture on unknown words. This I say not for reproof of 
you, who have scarcely and necessarily used, where occasion seemeth, 
a strange word so as it seemeth to grow out of the matter, and not 
to be sought for; but for my own defence, who might be counted 
overstraight a deemer of things if I gave not this account to you, my 
friend, of my marring this your handiwork. We find at this time 
innumerable complaints of the vast quantity of foreign words im- 
ported, from a thousand different sources, into the English tongue ; 
and it is curious to observe the struggles made, and made in vain, by 
the purists of this period, to establish some model or gtandard of 
style. In spite (or, perhaps, even in consequence) of these diffi- 
culties, the language was undoubtedly fixed and consolidated in the 
sixteenth century more efiectually, perhaps, than in any other period 
of equal duration ; for we must reflect that in this age also is included 
the whole splendid reign of Elizabeth. 

As specimens of the most familiar and idiomatic English — the 
English of the lower orders — we may cite the wild and witty pasqui- 
nades of Skelton, who attacked Wolsey with such persevering temerity. 
The translation of the Scriptures is by many supposed to have strong- 
ly and beneficially influenced the language of this age, but Barring- 
ton attributes (and in our opinion justly) a much greater power of 
purifying and fixing the idiom to. the publication of the statutes in 
English. Those noble and illustrious friends. Lord Surrey and Sir 
John Wyatt, had a powerful influence in the adorning of their native 
tongue, no less than Lord Berners, the translator of the Chronicles 
of Froissart. In the works of Roger Ascham, the learned preceptor 
of Elizabeth, we find the same dread of neologisms ; in short, almost 
every author of the times seems to be on his guard against that tor- 
rent of Italianisms, Gallicisms, and Spanish terms, which was soon 
to invade the language — -"taficta phrases, silken terms precise.'* 
Arthur Golding, who wrote in 1565, thus complains : — 

" Our English tongue is driven almost out of kind, 
Dismember'd, hack'd, maim'd, rent, and torn, 
Defaced, patch' d, marr'd, and made in scorn :" 



CHAP. I.] 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 



43 



and Carew, about 1580, informs us that, "within these sixty years we 
have incorporated so many Latin and French words as the third part 
of our language consisteth in them.'^ Spenser, in order to give (as 
a multitude of poets, ancient and modern, have striven to do) an air 
of antiquity to the language of his ' Faery Queen,' in harmony with 
the romantic chivalry of its subject, set the example — unhappily 
followed by many writers who had no such excuse as the English 
Ariosto — of reviving the obsolete diction of Chaucer; and Shaks- 
peare, with that intuitive good taste which characterises the higher 
order of genius, levelled the keen and brilliant shafts of his ridicule 
against the fantastic Euphuism or Italianated pedantry of the court, 
exactly as Habelais has gibbeted in immortal burlesque the " Pinda- 
rizing" Latinity of the pedants of his day, and Moliere has so cruelly 
immortalized the conceited jargon of the Hotel de Rambouillet. 

The influence, at this period, and even down to the end of the 
reign of James I., of Italian manners and literature, was very great ; 
an influence which was occasionally mingled with the somewhat 
similar tone of Spanish society : but this was afterwards to give place 
to a decided tendency towards a French taste in language, dress, and 
so on. During the stormy interval occupied by the Republic and 
Protectorate, men were too much occupied with graver and more 
pressing interests to cultivate literature with great ardour or success ; 
and even had this period been one of tranquil prosperity, the gloomy 
fanaticism of the times would have forbidden us to expect any im- 
provement in the language. At a period when British senators 
would rise in Parliament to expound the Epistles of St. Paul, when 
the stage was suppressed, and serious propositions were made to 
paint all the churches black to typify the gloom and corruption that 
reigned within them, it was natural to find the style of writers as 
mean as was the condition of most of the rulers, as narrow as their 
intolerance, and as extravagant as their doctrines ; and perhaps one 
of the true causes of Milton's adoption of the singularly artificial, 
learned, and involved way of writing which characterises his prose 
works, was his contempt for the ignorance of most of the republican 
party, whose political opinions he shared, while he abhorred their 
vices and despised their bigotry. 

Phillips, the nephew and pupil of Milton, in the preface to his 
' Theatrum Poetarum,' a work which is without doubt deeply tinged 
% with the literary taste and opinions of the author of the ' Paradise 
Lost,' complains of the gradually increasing French taste which 
characterised our literature when he wrote, L e. in 1675, in the reign 
of Charles 11, " I cannot but look upon it as a very pleasant 
humour that we should be so compliant with the French custom as 

I to follow set fashions, not only in garments, but in music and poetry. 

I . . . . Now, whether;/ the trunk-hose fashion of Queen Eliza- 
beth's days, or the pantaloon genius of ours, be best, I shall not be 



44 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. fCHAP. I. 



hasty to determme." The cause of the great influx of Gallicisftis 
which took place at the Restoration is undoubtedly to be found in 
the long exile of Charles II. during the stormy period of the Re- 
public. Charles, and the few faithful adherents who composed his 
court, passed many of those years in France ; he was indeed a pen- 
sioner of Versailles. He there naturally acquired a taste for the 
artificial and somewhat formal refinements of French literature, much 
more active and permanent than any which he might have retained 
for the vernacular literature of that nation which had brought his 
father to the block and compelled himself to encounter all the vicis- 
situdes of poverty and exile. At his return to the kingdom of his 
ancestors, it was the court which gave, in a great measure, the tone 
to the rest of the nation ; and it is from this epoch, consequently, 
that we must date the commencement of that long influence exerted 
on English by French manners and modes of thinking. 

This influence is very perceptible in all our writers during the 
reigns of William, Anne, and the three first Georges : it is to this 
that we must attribute that faintness, dimness, and commonplace 
good sense which characterises, with occasional splendid exceptions, 
the prose ; and that unimaginative and monotonous classicism which 
marks the courtly school of poetry, and which was not to be sup- 
planted by anything truly national and vigorous, till the glorious out- 
burst of new forms and modes of thought and expression in that 
splendid epoch illustrated by the contemporary names of Lord Byron, 
Scott, and Wordsworth. 

As to the elementary constitution of the English language as 
spoken and written in the present day, the following calculations 
may be found curious and instructive, and perhaps they may give a 
better notion of the present condition of the language than more 
general description. It has been ascertained that the English now 
consists of about 38,000 words, of which 23,000, or nearly Jive- 
eighths, are Anglo-Saxon in their origin; and that in our most 
idiomatic writers about nine-tenths are Anglo-Saxon, and in our least 
idiomatic writers about two-thirds. As examples of the most com- 
pletely idiomatic authors, we may instance the immortal De Foe, 
and among those who are least Saxon perhaps Gibbon may, without 
injustice, be adduced. There can be no doubt, however, that the 
Anglo-Saxon element is slowly but perceptibly diminishing ; and the 
learned Sharon Turner considers that one-fifth of the Saxon language 
has ceased to be used. 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 



45 



CHAPTER 11. 

CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES. 

Age of Chaucer — His Birth and Education — Translation in the Fourteenth 
Century — His Early Productions — His Career — Imbued with Provencal 
Literature — Character of his Poems — Romaunt of the Rose — Troilus and 
Cresseide — Anachronism — House of Fame — Canterbury Tales— Plan of 
this Work — The Pilgrims — Proposition of the Host — Plan of the Deca- 
meron — Superiority of Chaucer's Plan — Dialogue of the Pilgrims — Knight's 
Tale — Squire's Tale— Story of Griselda — Comic Tales — The tvyo Prose 
Tales — Rime of Sir Thopas — Parson's TTale — La'nguage of Chaucer — The 
Flower and the Leaf.^ 

Neither the plan nor the extent of the present volume will 
permit us to give a detailed history of all the productions, nor, 
indeed, even a list of all the names, which figure in the annals of 
English literature. It will be our aim to direct the reader's attention 
upon those great works and those illustrious names which form, as it 
were, the landmarks of the intellectual history of the country, and 
which gave the tone and colour to the various epochs to which they 
belong ; exerting also, according to circumstances, an influence more 
or less powerful on contemporary and succeeding generations. And 
by this method we hope to give a clearer idea of the scope and cha- 
racter of English literature than we could expect to afford them by 
a more elaborate and detailed work, the materials for which are so 
abundant, that it would require not a volume but a library to develop 
them as they deserve. 

We consider, therefore, the age of Chaucer as the true starting- 
point of the English literature properly so called. In Italy letters 
appear to have revived after the long and gloomy period characterised 
by the somewhat false term of " the dark ages,'' with astonishing 
rapidity. Like germs and seeds of plants which have lain for cen- 
turies buried deep in the unfruitful bowels of the earth, and sud- 
denly brought up by some convulsion of nature to the surface, the 
intellect of Italy burst forth, in the fourteenth century, into a tro- 
pical luxuriance, putting out its fairest flowers of poetry, and its 
solidest and most beautiful fruits of wisdom and of wit. Dante died 
seven years before, and Petrarch and Boccaccio about fifty years 
after, the birth of Chaucer, who thus was exposed to the strongest 
and directest influence of the genius of these great men. How great 
that influence was, we shall presently see. The great causes, then, 
which modified and directed the genius of Chaucer were — first, the 
new Italian poetry, which then suddenly burst forth upon the world, 
like Pallas from the brain of J upiter, perfect and consummate in its 



« 



46 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. II. 

virgin strength and beauty ; second, the now decaying Romanz or 
Provenyai poetry ; and third, the doctrines of the Reformation, which 
were beginning, obscurely but irresistibly, to agitate the minds of 
men ; a movement which took its origin, as do all great and perma- 
nent revolutions, in the lower depths of the popular heart, heaving 
gradually onwards, like the tremendous ground-swell of the equator, 
J until it burst with resistless strength upon the Romish Church in 
Germany and in England, sweeping all before it. Wickliffe, who 
, was born in 1324, only four years before Chaucer, had undoubtedly 
communicated to the poet many of his bold doctrines : the father of 
our poetry and the father of our reformed religion were both attached 
to the party of the celebrated John of Gaunt, and were both honoured 
with the friendship and protection of that powerful prince : Chaucer 
indeed was the kinsman of the Earl, having married the sister of 
Catherine Swinford, first the mistress and ultimately the wife of 
"time-honoured Lancaster;" and the poet's varied and uncertain 
career seems to have faithfully followed all the vicissitudes of John 
of Gaunt's eventful life. 

Geoffrey Chaucer was born, as he informs us himself, in London ; 
and for the date of an event so important to the destinies of English 
letters, we must fix it, on the authority of the inscription upon his 
tomb, as having happened in the year 1328 ; that is to say, at the 
commencement of the splendid and chivalrous reign of Edward IIL 
The honour of having been the place of his education has been 
eagerly disputed by the two great and ancient universities of Oxford 
and Cambridge ; the former, however, of the two learned sisters having 
apparently the best established right to the maternity — or at least 
the fosterage — of so illustrious a nurseling. Cambridge founds her 
claim upon the circumstance of Chaucer's having subscribed one of 
his early works " Philogenet o/' Cambridge, clerk." He afterwards 
returned to London, aud there became a student of the law. His 
detestation of the monks appears, from a very curious document, to 
have begun even so early as his abode in the grave walls of the 
Temple ; for we find the name of Jeffrey Chaucer inscribed in an 
ancient registar as having been fined for the misdemeanour of beating 
a friar in Fleet Street. 

The first efforts of a revival of letters will always be made in the 
path of translation ; and to this principle Chaucer forms no excep- 
tion. He was an indefatigable translator ; and the whole of many — 
nay, a great part of all — his works bears unequivocal traces of the 
prevailing taste for imitation. How much he has improved upon 
his models, what new lights he has placed them in, with what skill 
he has infused fresh life into the dry bones of obscure authors, it 
will hereafter be our business to inquire. He was the poetical pupil 
of Gower, and, like Raphael and Shakspeare, he surpassed his master : 
Gower always speaks with respect of his illustrious pupil in the art 



CHAP. II.] 



Chaucer's early productions. 



47 



of poetry ; and, in his work entitled ^ Confessio Amantis' places in 
the mouth of Yenus the following elegant compliment : — 

"And grete wel Chaucer, when ye mete, 
As my disciple and my poete : 
For in the flowers of his youth, 
In sundry wise, as he well couthe, 
Of ditees and of songes glade 
The which he for my sake made," &c. 

These lines also prove that Chaucer began early to write; and 
probably our poet continued during the whole course of his eventful 
life, to labour assiduously in the fields of letters. 

His earliest works were strongly tinctured with the manner, nay, 
even with the mannerism, of the age. They are much fuller of 
allegory than his later productions; they are distinguished by a 
greater parade of scholarship, and by a deeper tinge of that amorous 
and metaphysical mysticism which pervades the later Provencal 
poetry, and which reached its highest pitch of fantastical absurdity 
in the Arrets Amour of Picardy and Languedoc. As an example 
of this we may cite his ^ Dream,' an allegorical composition written 
to celebrate the nuptials of his friend and patron John of Graunt, 
with Blanche, the heiress of Lancaster. 

Chaucer was in every sense a man of the world : he was the orna- 
ment of two of the most brilliant courts in the annals of England — 
those of Edward III., and his successor Richard II. He also accom- 
panied the former king in his expedition into France, and was taken 
prisoner about 1359, at the siege of Betters; and in 1367 we find 
him receiving from the Crown a grant of 20 marks, i. e. about 200 Z. 
of our present money. 

Our poet, thus distinguished as a soldier, as a courtier, and as a 
scholar, was honoured with the duty of forming part of an embassy 
to the splendid court of Genoa, where he was present at the nuptials 
of Violante, daughter of Galeazzo Duke of Milan, with the Duke 
of Clarence. At this period he made the acquaintance of Petrarch, 
and probably of Boccaccio also : to the former of these illustrious 
men he certainly was personally known ; for he hints, in his ' Canter- 
bury Tales,' his having learned from him the beautiful and pathetic 
tale of the Patient G-riselda : — 

" Learned at Padua of a worthy clerke 
[ Francis Petrarke, the laureate poet, 

I Highte thys clerke, whose rhethorique sweet 

Enlumined al Itale of poesy." 

It was during his peregrinations in France and Italy that Chaucer 
drew at the fountain-head those deep draughts from the Hippocrene 
of Tuscany and of Provence which flow and sparkle in all his compo- 
sitions. It is certain that he introduced into the English language 
an immense quantity of words absolutely and purely French, and 
4 



48 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. JI, 



that he succeeded with an admirable dexterity in harmonizing the 
ruder sounds of his vernacular tongue ; so successfully, indeed, that 
it may be safely asserted that very few poets in any modern language 
are more exquisitely and uniformly musical than Chaucer, Indeed, 
he has been accused, and in rather severe terms, of having naturalized 
in English " a waggon-load of foreign words/' 

In 1380 we find Chaucer appointed to the office of Clerk of the 
Works at Windsor, where he was charged with overlooking the 
repairs about to made in St. Gi-eorge's Chapel, then in a ruinous 
condition. 

In 1383 Wickliffe completed his translation into the English lan- 
guage of the Bible, and his death, in the following year, seems to 
have been the signal for the commencement of a new and gloomy 
phase in the fortunes of the poet. Chaucer returned to England in 
1386, and, the party to which he belonged having lost its political 
influence, he was imprisoned in the Tower, and deprived of the 
places and privileges which had been granted to him. Two years 
afterwards he was permitted to sell his patents, and in 1389 he 
appears to have been induced to abandon, and even to accuse, his 
former associates, of whose treachery towards him he bitterly com- 
plains. 

In reward for this submission to the government, we afterwards 
find him restored to favour, and made, in the year 1389, Clerk of 
the Works at Westminster. It is at this period that he is supposed 
to have retired to pass the calm evening of his active life in the green 
shades of Woodstock, where he is related to have composed his 
admirable ' Canterbury Tales.' This production, though, according 
to many opinions, neither the finest nor even the most characteristic 
of Chaucer's numerous and splendid poems, is yet the one of them 
all by which he is now best known : it is the work which has handed 
his name down to future generations as the earliest glory of his 
country's literature ; and as such it warrants us in appealing, from 
the perhaps partial judgments of isolated critics, to the sovereign 
tribunal of posterity. The decisions of contemporaries may be swayed 
by fashion and prejudice ; the criticism of scholars may be tinged with 
partiality ; but the unanimous voice of four hundred and fifty years 
is sure to be a true index of the relative value of a work of genius. 

Beautiful as are many of his other productions, it is the ' Canter- 
bury Tales' which have enshrined Chaucer in the penetralia of 
England's Grlory Temple ; it is to the wit, the pathos, the humanity, 
the chivalry of those Tales that our minds recur when our ear is 
stnick with the venerable name of Chaucer. In 1390 we find the 
poet receiving the honourable charge of Clerk of the Works at 
Windsor ; and, two years later, a grant from the Crown of 20/. and 
a tun of wine annually. Towards the end of the century which his 
illustrious name had adorned, he appears to have fallen into some 



CHAP, n.] CHARACTER OF CHAUCER's POEMS. 



49 



distress ; for another docTiment is in existence securing to the poet 
the protection of the Crown (probably against importunate creditors) ; 
and in 1399 we find the poet's name inserted in the lease of a house 
holden from the Abbot and Chapter of Westminster, and occupying 
the spot upon which was afterwards erected Henry YU's Chapel, 
now forming one of the most brilliant ornaments of Westminster 
Abbey. In this house, as is with great probability conjectured, 
Chaucer died, on the 25th of October, 1400, and was buried in the 
Abbey, being the first of that long array of mighty poets whose 
bones repose with generations of kings, warriors, and statesmen 
beneath the "long-drawn aisles" of our national Walhalla. 

In reading the works of this poet the qualities which cannot fail 
to strike us most are — admirable truth, freshness, and livingness of 
his descriptions of external nature; profound knowledge of human 
life in the delineation of character; and that all-embracing humanity 
of heart which makes him, as it makes the reader, sympathise with 
all God's creation, taking away from his humour every taste of bit- 
terness and sarcasm. This humour, coloured by and springing from 
universal sympathy, this noblest humanity — we mean humanity in 
the sense of Terence's : " homo sum ; humani nihil a me alienum 
puto" — is the heritage of only the greatest among mankind; and is 
but an example of that deep truth which Nature herself has taught 
us, when she placed in the human heart the spring of Laughter fast 
by the fountain of Tears. 

We shall now proceed to examine the principal poems of Chaucer, 
in the hope of presenting to our readers some scale or measure of the 
gradual development of those powers which appear, at least to us, to 
have reached their highest apogee or exaltation in the ' Canterbury 
Tales.' 

In the first work to which we shall turn our attention, Chaucer 
has given us a translation of a poem esteemed by all French critics 
the noblest monument of their poetical literature anterior to the time 
of Francis I. This is the * Romaunt of the Rose,' a beautiful mix- 
ture of allegory and narrative, of which we shall presently give an 
outline in the words of Warton. The ^ Roman de la Rose' was 
commenced by William de Lorris, who died in 1260, and completed, 
in 1310, by Jean de Meun, a witty and satirical versifier, who was 
one of the ornaments of the brilliant court of Charles le Bel. 
Chaucer has translated the whole of the portion composed by the 
former, together with some of Meun's continuation ; making, as he 
goes on, innumerable improvements in the text, which, where it har- 
monizes with his own conceptions, he renders with singular fidelity. 
^' The difficulties and dangers of a lover, in pursuing and obtaining 
the object of his desires, are the literal argument of the poem. This 
design is couched under the allegory of a rose, which our lover, after 
■frequent obstacles, gathers in a delicious garden. He traverses vast 



50 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATUEE. 



[CHAP. II. 



ditches, scales lofty walls, and forces the gates of adamantine castles. 
These enchanted holds are all inhabited by various divinities ; some 
of which assist, and some oppose, the lover's progress/^ The English 
poem is written, like the French original, in the short rhymed octo- 
syllabic couplets so universally adopted by the Trouveres, a measure 
well fitted, from its ease and flowingness, for the purpose of long 
narratives. We have said that the translation is in most cases very 
close ; Chaucer was so far from desiring to make his works pass for 
original when they had no claim to this qualification, that he even 
specifies, with great care and with even a kind of exultation, the 
sources from whence his productions are derived. Indeed, at such 
early periods in the literature of any country, writers seem to attach 
as great or greater dignity to the ofiice of translator than to the more 
arduous duty of original composition ; the reason of which probably 
is, that in the childhood of nations as well as of men learning is a 
rarer, and therefore more admired, quality than imagination. 

The allegorical personages in the 'Romaunt of the Rose' are 
singularly varied, rich, and beautiful. Sorrow, Envy, Avarice, 
Hate, Beauty, Franchise, Richesse, are successively brought on the 
stage. As an example of the remarks we have just been making, 
we will quote a short passage from the latter part of Chaucer's trans- 
lation, i. e. from that portion of the poem composed by John of 
Meun : it describes the attendants in the palace of Old Age : we will 
print the original French beside the extract : — 

" Travaile et douleur la hebergent, " With her, Labour and eke Travaile 

Mais ils la lient et la chargeiit, Lodgid bene, with snrwe and wo. 

Q,ue Mort prochaine luy piesentent, That never out of her court go 

Ell talant de se repentir; Pain and Distress, Sekenesse and Ire, 

Tant luy sont de fleaux sentir; And Melanchoiie that angry sire, 

Adoncq luy vient en remembrance, Ben of her paiais Senatoures; 

En cest tardifve presence, Goning and Grutching her herbegeors. 

Q,uand il se volt foible et chenue." The day and night her to tourmeni, 

With cruel death they her present, 
And tellen her erliche and late, 
That Deth standith aruiid at her gate." 

Here Chaucer's improvements are plainly perceptible ; the introduc- 
tion of Death, standing armed at the gate, is a grand and sublime 
thought, of which no trace is to be found in the comparatively fiat 
original ; not to mention the terrible distinctness with which Chaucer 
enumerates Old Age's Senators, Pain, Distress, Sickness, Ire, and 
Melancholy ; and her grim chamberlains, Grroaning and Grudging. 

The next poem which we shall mention is the love-story entitled 
' Troilus and Cresseide,' founded on one of the most favourite legends 
of the Middle Ages, and which Shakspeare himself has dramatized 
in the tragedy of the same name. The anachronism of placing 
the scene of such a history of chivalric love in the heroic age 
of the Trojan War is, we think, more than compensated by the 
pathos, the nature, and the variety which characterize many of the 
ancient romances on this subject. Chaucer informs us that his au- 



CHAP. II.] CHAUCER : TROILUS AND CRESSEIDE. 



51 



thoritj is LolHus, a mysterious personage very often referred to by 
the writers of the Middle Ages, and so impossible to discover and 
identify that he must be considered as the Tgnis Fatuus of antiquaries. 

Of Lollius/' says one of these unhappy and baffled investigators, 
" it will become every one to speak with deference." The whole 
poem is saturated with the spirit not of the Ionian rhapsodist, but 
of the Provencal minstrel. It is written in the rhymed ten-syllabled 
couplet, which Chaucer has used in the greater part of his works. 
In the midst of a thousand anachronisms, of a thousand absurdities, 
this poem contains some strokes of pathos which are invariably to be 
found in everything Chaucer wrote, and which show that his heart 
ever vibrated responsive to the touch of nature. 

Though we propose, in a future volume, to give such specimens 
and extracts of Chaucer as may suffice to enable our readers to judge 
of his manner, we cannot abstain from citing here a most exquisite 
passage : it describes the bash fulness and hesitation of Cressida be- 
fore she can find courage to make the avowal of her love : — 

"And as the newe-abashed nightingale 

That stinteth first, vvlien she beginneth sing, 

When that she heareth any herdis tale, 

Or in the hedgis any wight stirring, 

And after siker doth her voice outring ; 

Right so Cresseide, when that her drede stent, 

Opened her herte and told him her entent." 

We may remark here the extraordinary fondness for the song of 
birds exhibited by Chaucer in all his works. There is not one of the 
English poets, and certainly none of the poets of any other nation, 
who has shown a more intense enjoyment for this natural music : he 
seems to omit no opportunity of describing the '^doulx ramaige" of 
these feathered poets, whose accents seem to be echoed in all their 
delicacy, their purity and fervour, in the fresh strains of " our Father 
Chaucer — 

" Sound of vernal showers 
On the twinkling grass, 
Rain-awakened flowers, 
All that ever was 
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass!" 

"We have mentioned the anachronism of plan in this poem it 
abounds in others no less extraordinary. Among these, he represents 
Cresseide as reading the Thebaid of Statins (a very favourite book 
of Chaucer), which he calls 'The Romance of Thebis;' and Pandarus 
endeavours to comfort Troilus with arguments of predestination taken 
from Bishop Bradwardine, a theologian nearly contemporary with the 
poet. 

The 'House of Fame/ a magnificent allegory, glowing with all 
the "barbaric pearl and gold" of Gothic imagination, is the next 
4 * 



52 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. II. 



work on which we shall remark. Its origin was probably Provencal, 
but the poem which Chaucer translated is now lost. We will con- 
dense the argument of this poem from Warton : — " The poet, in a, 
vision, sees a temple of glass decorated with an uncountable number 
of golden images. On the walls are engraved stories from VirgiFs 
Eneid and Ovid's Epistles. Leaving this temple, he sees an eagle 
with golden wings soaring near the sun. The bird descends, seizes 
the poet in its talons, and conveys him to the Temple of Fame, which, 
like that of Ovid, is situated between earth and sea. He is left by 
the eagle near the house, which is built of materials bright as polished 
glass, and stands on a rock of ice. All the southern side of this rock 
is covered with engravings of the names of famous men, which are 
perpetually melting away by the heat of the sun. The northern 
side of the rock was alike covered with names ; but, being shaded 
from the warmth of the sun, the characters here remained unmelted 
and unefFaced. Within the niches formed in the pinnacles stood all 
round the castle 

* All manere of minstrellis, 
And gestours, that tellen tales 
Both of weping and eke of game ;' 

and the most renowned harpers — Orpheus, Arion, Chiron, and the 
Briton Grlaskeirion. In the hall he meets an infinite multitude of 
heralds, on whose surcoats are embroidered the arms of the most 
redoubted champions. At the upper end, on a lofty shrine of car- 
buncle, sits Fame. Her figure is like those of Yirgil and Ovid. 
Above her, as if sustained on her shoulders, sate Alexander and 
Hercules. From the throne to the gates of the hall ran a range of 
pillars with respective inscriptions. On the first pillar, made of lead 
and iron, stood Josephus the Jewish historian, with seven other 
writers on the same subject. On the second, made of iron, and 
painted with the blood of tigers, stood Statius. On another, higher 
than the rest, stood Homer, Dares Phrygius, Livy, Lollius, Gruido 
of Colonna, and Geofii-ey of Monmouth, writers on the Trojan story. 
On a pillar of 'tinnid iron clere' stood Virgil; and next him, on a 
pillar of copper, appeared Ovid. The figure of Lucan was placed 
upon a pillar of iron ' wrought full sternly,' accompanied by many 
Roman historians. On a pillar of sulphur stood Claudian. The 
hall is filled by crowds of minor authors. In the mean time crowds 
of every nation and condition fill the temple, each presenting his 
claim to the queen, A messenger is sent to summon Eolus from his 
cave in Thrace, who is ordered to bring his two clarions Slander and 
Praise, and his trumpeter Triton. The praises of each petitioner are 
then sounded, according to the partial or capricious appointment of 
Fame; and equal merits obtain very different success. The poet 
then enters the house or labyrinth of Rumour. It was built of wil- 
low twigS; like a cage, and therefore admitted every sound. From 



CHAP, n.] 



CHAUCER: CANTERBURY TALES. 



53 



this house issue tidings of every kind, like fountains and rivers from 
the sea. Its inhabitants, who are eternally employed in hearing or 
telling news, raising reports, and spreading lies, are then humour- 
ously described : they are chiefly sailors, pilgrims, and pardoners. 
At length our author is awakened by seeing a venerable person of 
great authority; and thus the vision abruptly terminates." From 
the few lines we have quoted, it may be seen that this poem, like the 
^Romaunt of the Rose,' is written in the octosyllabic measure. 
Though full of extravagances, exaggerations of the already too 
monstrous personifications of Ovid, this work extorts our admiration 
by the inexhaustible richness and splendour of its ornaments; a 
richness as perfectly in accordance with Middle Age art, as it is ex- 
travagant and puerile in the tinsel pages of the Homan poet. That 
multiplicity of parts and profusion of minute embellishment which 
forms the essential characteristic of a Gothic cathedral is displaced 
and barbarous when introduced into the severer outlines of a Grrecian 
temple or a Roman amphitheatre. 

It now becomes our delightful duty to speak of the ' Canterbury 
Tales;' and we can hardly trust ourselves to confine within reason- 
able limits the examination of this admirable work, containing in 
itself, as it does, merits of the most various and opposite kinds. It 
is a finished picture, delineating almost every variety of human cha- 
racter, crowded with figures, whose lineaments no lapse of time, no 
change of manners, can render faint or indistinct, and which will re- 
tain, to the latest centuries, every stroke of outline and every tint of 
colour, as sharp and as vivid as when they came from the master's 
hand. The Pilgrims of Chaucer have traversed four hundred and 
fifty years — like the Israelites wandering in the Wilderness — arid 
periods of neglect and ignorance, sandy flats of formal mannerism, 
unfertilised by any spring of beauty, and yet " their garments have 
not decayed, neither have their shoes waxed old." 

Besides the lively and faithful delineation — i. e. descriptive de- 
lineation — of these personages, nothing can be more dramatic than 
the way in which they are set in motion, speaking and acting in a 
manner always conformable to their supposed characters, and mutually 
heightening and contrasting each other's peculiarities. Further yet, 
besides these triumphs in the framing of his Tales, the Tales them- 
selves, distributed among the various pilgrims of his troop, are, in 
almost every case, masterpieces of splendour, of pathos, or of 
drollery. 

Chaucer, in the Prologue to the ' Canterbury Tales,' relates that 
he was about to pass the night at the " Tabarde" inn in South wark, 
previous to setting out on a pilgrimage to the far-famed shrine of St. 
Thomas of Kent — i. e. Thomas a Becket — at Canterbury. On 
the evening preceding the poet's departure there arrive at the 
hostelry — 



54 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. H, 



" Wei nine and twenty in a compagnie 
Of sondry folk, by avanlure y-falle 
In felawship, and pilgrimes wer they alle, 
That toward Canterbury wolden ride." 

The poet, glad of the opportunity of travelling in such good com- 
pany, makes acquaintance with them all, and the party, after mutu- 
ally promising to start early in the morning, sup and retire to rest. 

Chaucer then gives a full and minute description, yet in incredibly 
few words, of the condition, appearance, manners, dress, and horses 
of the pilgrims. He first depicts a Knight, " brave in battle, and 
wise in council,^' courteous, grave, religious, experienced; who had 
fought for the faith in far lands, at Algesiras, at Alexandria, in 
llussia; a model of the chivalrous virtues : — 

" And though that he was worthy, he was wise, 
And of his port mehe as is a 7nayde. 
He was a veray parfit gentle knight." 

He is mounted on a good, though not showy, horse, and clothed in a 
simple gi'pon or close tunic, of serviceable materials, characteristically 
stained and discoloured by the friction of his armour. 

This valiant and modest gentleman is accompanied by his son, a 
perfect specimen of the damoyseau or "bachelor" of this, or of the 
graceful and gallant youth of noble blood in any period. Chaucer 
seems to revel in the painting of his curled and shining locks — " as 
they were laid in presse" — of his tall and active person, of his 
already-shown bravery, of his " love-longing, of his youthful ac- 
complishments, and of his gay and fantastic dress. His talent for 
music, his short embroidered gown with long wide sleeves (the fashion 
of the day), his perfect horsemanship, his skill in song-making, in 
illuminating and writing, his hopeful and yet somewhat melancholy 
love for his " lady,^^ — 

"So bote he loved, that by nightertale 
He slept no more than doth the nightingale — " 

nothing is omitted ; not a stroke too few or too many. 

This attractive pair are attended by a Yeman or retainer. • This 
figure is a perfect portrait of one of those bold and sturdy archers, 
the type of the ancient national character; a type which still exists 
in the plain independent peasantry of the rural districts of the land. 
He is clad in the picturesque costume of the greenwood, with his 
sheaf of peacock arrows bright and keen stuck in his belt, and bear- 
ing in his hand "a mighty bowe^^ — the far-famed "long-bow" of 
the English archers — the most formidable weapon of the Middle 
Ages, which twanged such fatal music to the chivalry of France at 
Poictiers and Agincourt. His "not-hed," his "brown visage," 
tanned by sun and wind, his sword and buckler, his sharp and well- 
equipped dagger, the silver medal of St. Christopher on his breast, 



CHAP, n.] 



CHAUCER: CANTERBURY TALES. 



55 



the horn in the green baldric — how life-like does he stand be- 
fore us! 

These three figures are admirably contrasted with a Prioress, a 
lady of noble birth and delicate bearing, full of the pretty affecta- 
tions, the dainty tendernesses of the "grande dame religieuse." Her 
name is " Madame Eglantine and the mixture, in her manners and 
costume, of gentle worldly vanities and of ignorance of the world ; 
her gaiety, and the ever- visible difficulty she feels to put on an air 
of courtly hauteur ; the ladylike delicacy of her manners at table, 
and her fondness for petting lap-dogs, — 

" Of smale houndes had she, that she fed 
With rested flesh, and milk, and vvastel-bread, 
But sore she wept if on of hem were dead, 
Or if men smote it with a yerde smert, 
For al was conscience, and tender herte," — 

this masterly outline is most appropriately framed (if we may so 
speak) in the external and material accompaniments — the beads of 
^' smale corall" hanging on her arm, and, above all, the golden brooch 
with its delicate device of a "crowned A," and the inscription ^mor 
vincit omnia. She is attended by an inferior Nun and three Priests. 

The monk follows next, and he, like all the ecclesiastics, with the 
single exception of the Personore or secular parish priest, is described 
with strong touches of ridicule ; but it is impossible not to perceive 
the strong and ever-present humanity of which we have spoken as 
perhaps the most marked characteristic of Chaucer's mind. The 
!Monk is a gallant, richly-dressed, and pleasure-loving sportsman, 
caring not a straw for the obsolete strictness of the musty rule of 
his order. His sleeves are edged with rich fur, his hood fastened 
under his chin with a gold pin headed with a " love-knot," his eyes 
are buried deep in his fleshy rosy cheeks, indicating great love of 
rich fare and potent wines ; and yet the impression left on the mind 
by this type of fat roystering sensuality is rather one of drollery and 
good-fellowship than of contempt or abhorrence. 

Chaucer exhibits rich specimens of the various genera of that 
vast species " Monachus monachans,'' as it may be classed by some 
Rabeloesian Theophrastus. The next personage who enters is the 
Frere, or mendicant friar, whose easiness of confession, wonderful 
skill in extracting money and gifts, and gay discourse are most 
humorously and graphically described. He is represented as always 
carrying store of knives, pins, and toys, to give to his female peni- 
tents, as better acquainted with the tavern than with the lazar-house 
or the hospital, daintly dressed, and "lisping somewhat'' in his 
speech, "to make his English swete upon the tongue." 

This "worthy Limitour" is succeeded by a grave and formal per- 
sonage, the Merchant : solemn and wise is he, with forked beai-d and 
pompous demeanour, speaking much of profit, and strongly in favour 



56 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. II. 



of the king's right to the subsidy " pour la saufgarde et eustodie del 
mer/' as the old Norman legist phrases it. He is dressed in motley, 
mounted on a tall and quiet horse, and wears a " Flaundrish beaver 
hat.'^ 

The learned poverty of the Gierke of Oxenforde forms a striking 
contrast to the Merchant's rather pompous "respectability." He 
and his horse are "leane as is a rake" with abstinence, his clothes 
are threadbare, and he devotes to the purchase of his beloved books 
all the gold which he can collect from his friends and patrons, devoutly 
praying, as in duty bound, for the souls of those 

" Who yeve him wherewith to scolaie." 
Nothing can be more true to nature than the mixture of pedantry 
and bashfulness in the manners of this anchoret of learning, and the 
tone of sententious morality and formal politeness which marks his 
language. 

We now come to a " Serjeant of the Lawe/' a wise and learned 
magistrate, rich and yet irreproachable, with all the statutes at his 
fingers' ends, a very busy man in reality, " but yet," not to forget 
the inimitable touch of nature in Chaucer, he seemed hesier than 
he was J' He is plainly dressed, as one who cares not to display his 
importance in his exterior. 

Nor are preceding characters superior, in vividness and variety, to 
the figure of the " Frankelein," or rich country-gentleman, who is 
next introduced : his splendid and hospitable profusion, and the epi- 
curean luxuriousness of the man himself, , are inimitably set before 
us. "It snewed in his house of mete and drink." 

Then come a number of burgesses, whose appearance is classed 
under one general description. These are a Haberdasher, Carpenter, 
Webbe (or Weaver), Dyer, and Tapiser — 

" AUe yclothed of o livere, 

Of a solempne and gret fraternite," — 

that is, they all belong to one of those societies, or mestiers, which 
play so great a part in the municipal history of the Middle Ages. 
The somewhat cossu richness of their equipment, their knives halted 
with silver, their grave and citizen-like bearing — all is in harmony 
with the pride and vanity, hinted at by the poet, of their wives, who 
think "it is full fayre to be ycleped Madame." 

The skill and critical discernment of the Cook are next described : 
"Well could he know a draught of London ale," and elaborately 
could he season the rich and fantastic dishes which composed the 
" carte" of the fourteenth century. He joins the pilgrimage in hope 
that his devotion may cure him of a disease in the leg. 

A turbulent and boisterous Shipman appears next, who is described 
with minute detail. His brown complexion, his rude and quarrel- 
some manners, his tricks of trade, stealing wine "from Burdeux 



CHAP. II.] 



CHAUCER : CANTERBURY TALES. 



57 



ward, while that the chapman slepe," all is enumerated; nor does 
the poet forget the seaman's knowledge of all the havens " from 
Gothland to the Cape de Finistere/' nor his experience in his profes- 
sion : "In many a tempest had his herd be shake." 

He is followed by a Doctour of Phisike, a great astronomer and 
natural magician, deeply versed in the ponderous tomes of Hippo- 
crates, tiali, Galen, Rhasis, Averrhoes, and the Arabian physicians. 
His diet is but small in quantity, but rich and nourishing ; " Ids study 
is but little on the Bible and he is humorously represented as 
particularly fond of gold, "for gold in phisike is a cordiall." 

Next to the grave, luxurious, and not quite orthodox Doctor enters 
the " Wife of Bath,'' a daguerreotyped specimen of the female 
bourgeoise of Chaucer's day; and bearing so perfectly the stamp and* 
mark of her class, that, by changing her costume a little to the 
dress of the nineteenth century, she would serve as a perfect sample 
of her order even in the present day. She is equipped with a degree 
of soKd costliness that does not exclude a little coquetry ; her charac- 
ter is gay, bold, and not over rigid ; and she is endeavouring, by long 
and frequent pilgrimages, to expiate some of the amorous errors of 
her youth. She is a substantial manufacturer of cloth, and so 
jealous of her precedency in the religious ceremonies of her parish, 
that, if any of her female acquaintance should venture to go before 
her on these solemn occasions, " so wroth was she, that she was out 
of alle charitee." 

Contrasted with this rosy dame are two of the most beautiful and 
touching portraits ever delineated by the hand of genius — one " a 
pour Persoune," or secular parish priest ; and his brother in simplicity, 
virtue, and evangelic purity, a Plowman. It is in these characters, 
and particularly in the " Tale" put into the mouth of the former, 
that we most distinctly see Chaucer's sympathy with the doctrines 
of the Reformation : the humility, self-denial, and charity of these 
two pious and worthy men, are opposed with an unstudied, but not 
the less striking pointedness, to the cheatery and sensuality which 
distinguish all the monks and friars represented by Chaucer. So 
beautiful and so complete is this noble delineation of Christian piety, 
that we will not venture to injure its effect by quoting it piecemeal 
in this place, but refer our readers to the volume of extracts, in 
vhich the whole of Chaucer's Prologue will be found at length. 

Then we find enumerated a Reve, a Miller, a Sompnour (an officer 
in the ecclesiastical courts), a Pardoner, a Manciple, and "myself," 
that is, Chaucer. 

The Miller is a brawny, short, red-headed fellow, strong, boister- 
ous and quarrelsome,~]Qat-nosed, wide-mouthed, debauched; he is 
dressed in a white coat and blue hood, and armed with sword and 
buckler. 

His conversation and conduct correspond faithfully with such an 



58 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. 



[CHAP. II. 



appearance : lie enlivens the journey by his skill in playing on the 
bagpipe. 

The Manciple was an officer attached to the ancient colleges ; his 
duty was to purchase the provisions and other commodities for the 
consumption of the students; in fact, he was a kind of steward. 
Chaucer describes this pilgrim as singularly adroit in the exercise of 
his business, taking good care to advantage himself the while. 

Another of the most elaborately painted pictures in Chaucer's • 
gallery is the " Reve," bailiiF, or intendant of some great proprietor's 
estates. He stands before us as a slender, long-legged, choleric indi- 
vidual, with his beard shaven as close as possible, and his hair ex- 
ceedingly short. He is a severe and watchful manager of his mas- 
ter's estates, and had grown so rich that he was able to come to his 
lord's assistance, and " lend him of his owen good." His horse is 
described, and even named, and he is described as always riding 
^' the hinderest of the route." 

Nothing can surpass the nature and truthfulness with which 
Chaucer has described the Sompnour. His face is fiery red, as che- 
rubim were painted, and so covered with pimples, spots, and disco- 
lorations, that neither mercury, sulphur, borax, nor any purifying 
ointment, could cleanse his complexion. He is a great lover of 
onions, leeks, and garlic, and fond of ^'strong win as red as blood;" 
and when drunk he would speak nothing but Latin, a few terms of 
which language he had picked up from the writs and citations it was 
his profession to serve. He is a great taker of bribes, and will allow 
any man to set at nought the archdeacon's court in the most flagrant 
manner "for a quart of wine." 

The last of the pilgrims is the " Pardonere," or seller of indul- 
gences from Rome. He is drawn to the life, singing, to the bass of 
his friend the Sompnour, the song of " Come hither, love, to me." 
The Pardoner's hair is " yellow as wax," smooth and thin, lying on 
his shoulders : he wears no hood, " for joUite," — that is, in order to 
appear in the fashion. His eyes (as is often found in persons of 
this complexion — note Chaucer's truth to nature) are wide and 
staring like those of a hare ; his voice is a harsh treble, like that of 
a goat ; and he has no beard. Chaucer then enumerates the various 
articles of the Pardoner's professional budget; and certainly there 
never was collected a list of droller relics : he has Our Lady's veil, 
a morsel of the sail of St. Paul's ship, a glass full of pigges bones," 
and a pewter cross crammed with other objects of equal sanctity. 
With the aid of these and the hypocritical unction of his address, he 
could manage, in one day, to extract from poor and rustic people 
more money than the Parson (the regular pastor of the parish) could 
collect in two months. 

The number of the pilgrims now enumerated will be found by 
any one who takes the trouble to count them to amount to thii'ty- 



CHAP. II.] 



CHAUCER: CANTERBURY TALES. 



59 



one, including Chaucer ; and the poet describes them setting out on 
their journey on the following morning. Before their departure, 
however, the jolly Host of the Tabarde makes a proposition to the 
assembled company. He offers to go along with them himself, on 
condition that they constitute him a kind of master of the revels 
during their journey; showing how agreeably and profitably they 
could beguile the tedium of the road with the relation of stories. 
He then proposes that on their return they should all sup together 
at his hostelry, and that he among them who shall have been 
adjudged to have told the best story should be entertained at the 
expense of the whole society. This proposal is unanimously adopted; 
and nothing can be finer than the mixture of fun and good sense 
with which honest Harry Bailey, the Host, sways the merry sceptre 
of his temporary sovereignty. 

This then is the framework or scaffolding on which Chaucer has 
erected his Canterbury Tales. The practice of connecting together 
a multitude of distinct narrations by some general thread of incident 
is very natural and extremely ancient. The Orientals, so passionately 
fond of tale-telling, have universally — and not always very artifi- 
cially — given consistency and connection to their stories by putting 
them into the mouth of some single narrator : the various histories 
which compose the Thousand and One Nights are supposed to be 
successively recounted by the untiring lips of the inexhaustible 
Princess Scheherazade; but the source from whence Chaucer more 
immediately adopted his framing was the Decameron of Boccaccio. 
This work (as it may be necessary to inform our younger readers) 
consists of a hundred tales divided into decades, each decade occu- 
pying one day in the relation. They are narrated by a society of 
young men and women of rank, who have shut themselves up in a 
most luxmious and beautiful retreat on the banks of the Arno, in 
order to escape the infection of the terrible plague then ravaging 
Florence. 

If we compare the plan of Chaucer with that of the Florentine, 
we shall not hesitate to give the palm of propriety, probability, and 
good taste to the English poet. A pilgrimage was by no means an 
expedition of a mournful or solemn kind, and afforded the author the 
widest field for the selection of character from all classes of society, 
and an excellent opportunity for the divers humors and oddities of a 
company fortuitously assembled. It is imposible, too, not to feel that 
there is something cruel and shocking in the notion of these young 
luxurious Italians of Boccaccio whiling away their days in tales of 
sensual trickery or sentimental distress, while without the well- 
guarded walls of their retreat thousands of their kinsmen and fellow- 
citizens were writhing in despairing agony. Moreover, the similarity 
of rank and age in the personages of Boccaccio produces an insi- 
pidity and want of variety : all these careless voluptuaries are repe= 
5 



60 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. IT. 



titions of Dioneo and Fiammetta : and the period of ten days adopted 
by the Italian has the defect of being purely arbitrary, there being 
no reason why the narratives might not be continued indefinitely. 
Chaucer's pilgrimage, on the contrary, is made to Canterbury, and 
occupies a certain and necessary time; and, on the return of the 
travellers, the society separates as naturally as it had assembled ; 
after giving the poet the opportunity of introducing two striking and 
appropriate events — their procession to the shrine of St. Thomas at 
their arrival in Canterbury, and the prize-supper on their return to 
London. 

Had Chaucer adhered to his original plan, we should have had a 
tale from each of the party on the journey out, and a second tale 
from every pilgrim on the way back, making in all sixty-two — or, if 
the Host also contributed his share, sixty-four. But, alas ! the poet 
has not conducted his pilgrims even to Canterbury ; and the tales 
which he has made them tell only make us the more bitterly lament 
the non-fulfilment of his original intention. 

Before we speak of the narratives themselves, it will be proper to 
state that our poet continues to describe the actions, conversation, 
4ind deportment of his pilgrims : and nothing can be finer than the 
remarks put into their mouths respecting the merits of the various 
tales ; or more dramatic than the alfected bashfulness of some, when 
called upon to contribute to the amusement of their companions, and 
the squabbles and satirical jests made by others. 

These passages, in which the tales themselves are, as it were, 
incrusted, are called Prologues to the various narratives which they 
respectively precede, and they add inexpressibly to the vivacity and 
movement of the whole, as in some cases the tales spring, as it were, 
spontaneously out of the conversations. 

Of the tales themselves it will be impossible to attempt even a 
rapid summary : we may mention, as the most remarkable among 
the serious and pathetic narratives, the Knight's Tale, the subject 
of which is the beautiful story of Palamon and Arcite, taken from 
the Teseide of Boccaccio, but it is unknown whether originally 
invented by the great Italian, or, as is far more probable, imitated by 
him from some of the innumerable versions of the "noble story' ^ 
of Theseus current in the Middle Ages. The poem is full of a 
strange mixture of manners and periods : the chivtlric and the heroic 
ages appear side by side : but such is the splendour of imagination 
displayed in this immortal work, so rich is it in magnificence, in 
pathos, in exquisite delineations of character, and artfully contrived 
turns of fortune, that the reader voluntarily dismisses all his chro- 
nology, and allows himself to be carried away with the fresh and 
sparkling current of chivalric love and knightly adventure. No 
reader ever began this poem without finishing it, or ever read it once 
without returning to it a second time. The effect upon the mind is 



CHAP. II.] 



CHAUCER: CANTERBURY TALES. 



61 



like that of some gorgeous tissue, gold-inwoven, of tapestry, in an 
old baronial hall; full of tournaments and battles, imprisoned 
knights, and emblazoned banners, Gothic temples of Mars and 
Venus, the lists, the dungeon and the lady's bower, garden and 
fountain, and moonlit groves. Chaucer's peculiar skill in the de- 
lineation of character and appearance by a few rapid and masterly 
strokes is as perceptible here as in the Prologue to the Tales : the 
procession of the kings to the tournament is as bright and vivid a 
piece of painting as ever was produced by the strong braine" of 
mediasval Art : and in point of grace and simplicity, what can be 
finer than the single line descriptive of the beauty of Emilie — so 
suggestive, and therefore so superior to the most elaborate portrait — 
Up rose the sun, and up rose Emelie" ? 

The next poem of a serious character is the Squire's Tale, which 
indeed so struck the admiration of Milton — himself profoundly pene- 
trated by the spirit of the Romanz poetry — that it is by an allusion 
to the Squire's Tale that he characterizes Chaucer when enumerating 
the great men of all ages, and when he places him beside Plato, 
Shakspeare, jS]schylus, and his beloved Euripides : he supposes his 
Cheerful Man as evoking Chaucer : — 

"And call up him who left half told 
The story of Cambuscan bold." 

The imagery of the Squire's Tale was certainly well calculated to 
strike such a mind as Milton's, so gorgeous, so stately, so heroic, and 
imbued with all the splendour of Oriental literature ; for the scenery 
and subject of this poem bear evident marks' of that Arabian influ- 
ence which colours so much of the poetry of the Middle Ages, and 
which probably began to act upon the literature of Western Europe 
after the Crusades. 

In point of deep pathos — pathos carried indeed to an extreme and 
perhaps hardly natural or justifiable pitch of intensity — we will now 
cite, among the graver tales of our pilgrims, the story put into the 
mouth of the Clerke of Oxenforde. This is the story of the Patient 
Griselda — a model of womanly and wifely obedience, who comes vic- 
toriously out of the most cruel and repeated ordeals inflicted upon 
her conjugal and maternal affections. The beautiful and angelic 
figure of the Patient Wife in this heart-rending story reminds us of 
one of those seraphic statues of Virgin Martyrs which stand with 
clasped hands and uplifted, imploring eye, in the carved niches of a 
Grothic cathedral — an eternal prayer in sculptured stone, — 

" Patience on a monument, 

Smiling at Grief!" 

The subject of this tale is, as we mentioned some pages back, invented 
by Boccaccio, and first seen in 1374, by Petrarch, who was so struck 



62 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. H. 



with its beauty that he translated it into Latin^ and it is from this 
translation that Chaucer drew his materials. The English poet 
indeed appears to have been ignorant of Boccaccio's claim to the 
authorship, for he makes his Gierke say that he had learned it 
from " Fraunceis Petrarke, the laureat poete." Petrarch himself 
bears the strongest testimony to the almost overwhelming pathos of 
the story, for he relates that he gave it to a Paduan acquaintance of 
his to read, who fell into a repeated agony of passionate tears. Chau- 
cer's poem is written in the Italian stanza. 

Of the comic tales the following will be found the most excellent: 
— The Nun's Priest's Tale, a droll apologue of the Cock and the 
Pox, in which the very absurdity of some of the accompaniments 
confers one of the highest qualities which a fable can possess, viz. 
so high a degree of individuality that the reader forgets that the per- 
sons of the little drama are animals, and sympathizes with them as 
human beings; the Merchant's Tale, which, like the comic stories 
generally, though very indelicate, is yet replete with the richest and 
broadest humour ; the Reve's Tale, and many shorter stories distri- 
buted among the less prominent characters. But the crown and 
pearl of Chaucer's drollery is the Miller's Tale, in which the delicate 
and penetrating description of the various actors in the adventure 
can only be surpassed by the perfectly natural yet outrageously ludi- 
crous catastrophe of the intrigue in which they move. 

There is certainly nothing, in the vast treasury of ancient or mo- 
dern humorous writing, at once so real, so droll, and so exquisitely 
enjou^ in the manner of telling. It is true that the subject is not 
of the most delicate nature ; but, though coarse and plain-speaking, 
Chaucer is never corrupt or vicious : his improprieties are rather the 
fruit of the ruder age in which he lived, and the turbid ebullitions 
of a rich and active imagination, than the cool, analysing, studied 
profligacy — the more dangerous and corrupting because veiled under 
a false and m.orbid sentimentalism — which defiles a great portion of 
the modern literature of too many civilised countries. 

It is worthy of remark that all the tales are in verse with the ex- 
ception of two, one of which, singularly enough, is given to Chaucer 
himself. This requires some explanation. When the poet is first 
called upon for his story, he bursts out into a long, confused, fantas- 
tical tale of chivalry, relating the adventures of a certain errant-knight, 
Sir Thopas, and his wanderings in search of the Queen of Faerie. 
This is written in the peculiar versification of the Trouveres (note, 
that it is the only tale in which he has adopted this measure), and is 
full of all the absurdities of those compositions. When in the full 
swing of declamation, and when we are expecting to be overwhelmed 
with page after page of this sleazy stuff," — for the poet goes on 
gallantly, like Don Quixote, " in the style his books of chivalry had 
taught him^ imitating, as near as he can, their very phrase," — he is 



CHAP, n.] 



CHAUCER : CANTERBUUY TALES. 



63 



suddenly interrupted by honest Harry Bailey, the Host, who plays 
the part of Moderator or Chorus to Chaucer's pleasant comedy. The 
Host begs him, with many strong expressions of ridicule and disgust, 
to give them no more of such drafty rhyming,''' and entreats him 
to let them hear something less worn-out and tiresome. The poet 
then proposes to entertain the party with "a litel thinge in prose,^' 
and relates the allegorical story of Meliboeus and his wife Patience. 
It is evident that Chaucer, well aware of the immeasurable superi- 
ority of the newly revived classical literature over the barbarous and 
now exhausted invention of the Romanz poets, has chosen this in- 
genious method of ridiculing the commonplace tales of chivalry ; but 
so exquisitely grave is the irony in this passage, that many critics 
have taken the ' Rime of Sir Thopas ' for a serious composition, and 
have regretted it was left a fragment ! 

The other prose tale (we have mentioned Meliboeus) is supposed 
to be related by the Parson, who is always described as a model of 
Christian humility, piety, and wisdom; which does not, however, 
save him from the terrible suspicion of being a Lollard, i. e., a he- 
retical and seditious revolutionist. 

This composition hardly can be called a tale," for it contains 
neither persons nor events ; but it is very curious as a specimen of 
the sermons of the early Reformers ; for a sermon it is, and nothing 
else — a sermon upon the Seven Deadly Sins, divided and subdivided 
with all the pedantic regularity of the day. It also gives us a very 
curious insight into the domestic life, the manners, the costume, and 
even the cookery, of the fourteenth century. Some critics have con- 
tended that this sermon was added to the Canterbury Tales by Chau- 
cer at the instigation of his confessors, as a species of penitence for 
the light and immoral tone of much of his writings, and particularly 
as a sort of recantation, or amende honorahle, for his innumerable 
attacks on the monks. But this supposition is in direct contradiction 
with every line of his admirable portrait of the Parson ] and, how- 
ever natural it may have been for the licentious Boccaccio to have 
done such public penance for his ridicule of the " Frati,'^ and his 
numberless sensual and immoral scenes, his English follower was 
"made of sterner stuff/' The friend of John of Gaunt, and the 
disciple of Wickliffe, was not so easily to be worked upon by monastic 
subtlety as the more superstitious and sensuous Italian. 

The language of Chaucer is a strong exemplification of the remarks 
we made in our first chapter respecting the structure of the English 
language. The ground of his diction will be ever found to be the 
pure vigorous Anglo-Saxon English of the people, inlaid, if we may 
so style it, with an immense quantity of Norman-French words. We 
may compare this diction to some of those exquisite specimens of 
incrusting left us by the obscure but great artists of the Middle 
5* 



64 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. II. 



Ages, in which the polish of metal or ivory contrasts so richly with 
the lustrous ebony. 

The difficulty of reading this great poet is very much exaggerated : 
a very moderate acquaintance with the French and Italian of the 
fourteenth century, and the observation of a few simple rules of pro- 
nunciation, will enable any educated person to read and to enjoy. In 
particular it is to be remarked that the final letter e, occurring in so 
many English words, had not yet become an e mute; and must con- 
stantly be pronounced, as well as the termination of the past tense, 
ed, in a separate syllable. The accent also is more varied in its po- 
sition than is now common in the language. Eead with these pre- 
cautions, Chaucer will be found as harmonious as he is tender, mag- 
nificent, humorous, or sublime. 

Until the reader is able and willing to appreciate the innumerable 
beauties of the Canterbury Tales, it is not to be expected that he can 
make acquaintance with the graceful though somewhat pedantic 
^ Court of Love,^ an allegorical poem, bearing the strongest marks 
of its Provencal origin ; or with the exquisite delicacy and pure 
chivalry of the 'Flower and the Leaf / of which latter poem Camp- 
bell speaks as follows, enthusiastically but justly : — " The Flower 
and the Leaf is an exquisite piece of fairy fancy. With a moral that 
is just sufficient to apologise for a dream, and yet which sits so lightly 
on the story as not to abridge its most visionary parts, there is, in 
the whole scenery and objects of the poem, an air of wonder and 
sweetness, an easy and surprising transition, that is truly magical." 

We cannot conclude this brief and imperfect notice of this great 
poet without strongly recommending all those who desire to know 
something of the true character of English literature to lose no time 
in making acquaintance with the admirable productions of " our 
father Chaucer,^' as Gascoigne affectionately calls him : the difficulties 
of his style have been unreasonably exaggerated, and the labour 
which surmounts them will be abundantly repaid. It will conduct 
you,'' to use the beautiful words of Milton, " to a hill-side; laborious 
indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of 
goodly prospects and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp 
of Orpheus was not more charming.'' 



ELIZABETHAN ERA. 



65 



CHAPTER III. 

SIDNEY AND SPENSER. 

EliAfibethan Era — Ages of Pericles, Augustus, the Medici, Louis XVI. — 
Chivalry — Sidney — the Arcadia — His Style — Spenser — Shepherd's Calendar 
— Pastoral — Spenser at Court — Burleigh and Leicester— Settlement in Ire- 
land — the Faery Queen — Spenser's Death — Criticism of the Faery Queen — 
Style, Language, and Versification. 

In the history of most countries the period of the highest literary 
glory will generally be found to coincide with that of some very 
marked and permanent achievements in commerce or in war. Nor 
is this circumstance surprising. Those men who best can perform 
great actions are in general best able to think sublime thoughts. It 
was not a fortuitous assemblage, in the same country and at the same 
period, of such minds as those of Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, 
that has made us assume the age of Pericles as the culminating 
point of Athenian literature. No ! the defeat of the Persians can- 
not but be considered as having a great deal to do with the existence 
of that splendid period. 

In the same way the far-famed age of Louis XIV. was undoubtedly 
prepared, if not produced, by the long religious wars of the Refor- 
mation, the national enthusiasm being also raised by the brilliant 
exploits of French arms in Germany and Flanders. 

That period in the history of English letters which corresponds to 
the epochs to which we have alluded is the age of Elizabeth. It is 
the Elizabethan era which represents, among us, the age of Pericles, 
that of Augustus, that of the Medici, that of Leo, that of Louis ; nay, 
it may be asserted, and without any exaggerated national vanity, 
that the productions of this one era of English literature may boldly 
be opposed to the intellectual triumphs of all the other epochs 
mentioned, taken collectively. 

In this case, as in the others, a gigantic revolution had taken place, 
recent indeed, but not so recent as to leave men's minds under the 
(more immediate action of party spirit and political enmity. The 
intellect of England had lately been engaged in a struggle for its 
liberty and its religion ; it had had time to repose, but not to be enfee- 
bled : it now started on its race of immortality, glowing, indeed, from 
the arena, but not weakened ; its muscles strung with wrestling, but not 
exhausted. During the actual ardour of any great political struggle, 
men's minds are naturally too intent upon the more immediate and 
personal question, and their views too much narrowed and distorted 
by prejudice and polemics, for any great achievements in general 



66 



OUTLINES or GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. III. 



literature to be expected; but it is in the period of tranquillity 
immediately succeeding such great national revolutions that the 
human intellect soars aloft with steadiest, broadest, and sublimest 
wing into the calmer empyrean of poetry or philosophy — 

X " Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot 

Which men call Earth." 

The great revolution to which we have been alluding is, we hardly 
need say, the Reformation ; the doctrines of which were first solidly 
established in England under the sceptre of Elizabeth, and in whose 
vehement struggles was trained that generation which was to be 
adorned by Sidney, by Spenser, and by Raleigh. 

The other condition, too, which we have specified as necessary to 
the production of a great and immortal era in literature, viz. a high 
degree of military glory, was certainly to be found in this reign : we 
need only mention the annihilation of the Spanish Armada. 

In England, at all periods of our history, literature, speaking 
generally, has almost always emanated from the people, and conse- 
quently has always talked the language of the people, and addressed 
itself to the people's sympathies; and this is the reason of the 
greater vital force which it must be allowed to possess. Homer and 
Shakspeare will ever be read with increasing ardour and veneration, 
and this because their works reflect, not so much a period or a nation, 
as the universal heart of man — the same in every climate and in 
every age. 

Besides this fortunate circumstance there were also certain influ- 
ences at work, peculiar to that brilliant period, and calculated to pro- 
duce and foster the rapid development which then took place. We 
have seen the tone of the Italian poetry first infused, so to speak, 
into English literature by Chaucer and Gower, and the immense 
influx of classic ideas and classic language which flowed in at that 
time. At first, however, the crasis (to use a term of the old medi- 
cine) between the dissimilar and discordant elements — the ancient 
Saxonism, the modern classicism, and the romantic spirit of the 
chivalrous literature — was not, as might have been expected, perfect 
or complete; and it was not till the time of Elizabeth that the 
amalgamation of these elements was sufiiciently brought about to 
produce a harmonious and healthy result. The spirit of the Refor- 
mation, also — an inquiring, active, practical, and fervent spirit — was 
necessary to complete the union of these discordant ingredients. 

Chivalry, indeed, as a political or social system, had ceased to 
exist at the period of Elizabeth : that is to say, chivalry no longer 
exerted any very perceptible influence on the relations of men with 
the state or with each other. But though it no longer existed as an 
active and energetic influence, modifying either social life or political 
relations ; though it no longer gave any tone to the general physiogno- 



CHAP. III.} 



SIDNEY: THE ARCADIA. 



67 



my of the times, its moral inflaence still existed with powerful though 
diminished force : it still perceptibly modified the manners of the 
court and of the higher classes ; the idol was indeed cast down from 
the altar, but a solemn and holy atmosphere of sanctity still breathed 
around the walls of the temple ; the pure, the ennobling, the heroic 
portion of the knightly spirit yet glowed with no decaying fervour 
in the hearts of such men as Essex, Raleigh, Sidney ; and found a 
worthy voice in the sweet dignity of Spenser's song. 

Though the joust and tournament had degenerated from their 
ancient splendour (and this because they were no longer so necessary 
as of old), and had become the idle pageant of a magnificent court, 
many of the gallant tilters of Whitehall had not forgotten the princi- 
ples of the chivalric character — "high thoughts, seated,'^ to use the 
beautiful language of Sidney, " in a heart of courtesy.'' 

Of this majestic period the brightest figure is that of Sir Philip 
Sidney, the most complete embodiment of all the graces and virtues 
which can adorn or ennoble humanity. He was at once the Bayard 
and the Petrarch of English history, a name to which every Briton 
looks back with pride, admiration, and regret. Noble of birth, beau- 
tiful in person, splendid and generous, of a bravery almost incredible, 
wise in council, learned himself, and a powerful and generous pro- 
tector of learning — in him seem to be united all the solidest gifts 
and the most attractive ornaments of body and of mind. The throne 
of Poland, to which he was elected, could hardly have conferred ad- 
ditional splendour upon so consummate a character; and we almost 
approve of the jealous admiration of Elizabeth, who prevented him 
from mounting that throne, that she might not lose the "jewel of her 
court." Very brief, indeed, was the career of this glorious star 
of the Elizabethan firmament, but the brightness of its setting was 
well worthy of its rising and meridian ray ; and the field of Zutphen 
was sanctified by those words which can hardly be paralleled in the 
history of ancient or modern heroism : "this man's necessity is greater 
than mine." But the hand which faintly motioned the cup to the 
lips of the dying soldier was the same which wrote the knightly 
pages of the ' Arcadia,' and touched the softest note of "that small 
lute" which " gave ease to Petrarch's pain," and drew from the son- 
net a tender melody not unworthy of the poet of Arqua. 

There are few productions of similar importance whose character 
and merits have been so much misrepresented by modern ignorance 
and superficial criticism as Sidney's great work, the romance of the 
* Arcadia.' 

Disraeli has collected, in his ^Amenities of Literature,' a large 
number of depreciating criticisms made by various authors on the 
'Arcadia' of Sidney. Walpole pronounced it "a tedious, lament- 
able, pedantic, pastoral romance Gifibrd affirms " that the plan is 
poor, the incidents trite, the style pedantic Dunlop complains that 



68 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. III. 



it is '^extremely tiresome;" yet this book was tlie favourite and 
model in the age of Shakspeare ! Shakspeare has in a thousand ex- 
quisite places imitated the scenes, the manners, and even the diction 
of the 'Arcadia;' Shirley, Beaumont, and Fletcher turned to it as 
their text-book ; Sidney enchanted two later brothers in Waller and 
Cowley ; and the world of fashion in Sidney's age culled their phrases 
out of the 'Arcadia/ which served them as a complete 'Academy of 
Compliments/ 

Disraeli then goes on to show that modern critics, misled by the 
title of this prose romance, which Sidney injudiciously adopted from 
Sannazzaro, have generally concluded, without taking the trouble of 
reading it, to consider it as a pastoral, similar to that multitudinous 
class of fictions so popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 
and of which the ' Galatea' of Cervantes is a well-known specimen. 
The fact is, however, that the Jlrcadian or pastoral parts of Sidney's 
work are merely supplementary, forming no essential portion of the 
narrative ; being, in short, merely interludes of shepherds introduced 
dancing and reciting verses at the close of each book. There can be 
no doubt but that the scenes and sentiments described with such a 
sweet luxuriance of beautiful language were reflections of true events 
in Sidney's own chivalrous life, and transcripts from his own gentle 
and heroic heart. We cannot better conclude our notice on this 
work than by a selection from the remarks of Disraeli : — " He de- 
scribes objects on which he loves to dwell, with a peculiar richness 
of fancy : he had shivered his lance in the tilt, and had managed the 
fiery courser in his career; and in the vivid picture of the shock be- 
tween two knights we see distinctly every motion of the horse and 
^ horseman. But sweet is his loitering hour in the sunshine of luxu- 
riant gardens, or as we lose ourselves in the green solitudes of the 
forests which most he loves. There is a feminine delicacy in what- 
ever alludes to the female character, not merely courtly, but imbued 
with that sensibility which St. Palaye has remarkably described as 
' full of refinement and fanaticism.' And this may suggest an idea, 
not improbable, that Shakspeare drew his fine conceptions of female 
character from Sidney. Shakspeare solely, of all our elder dramatists, 
has given true beauty to woman; and Shakspeare was an attentive 
reader of the ' Arcadia.' " 

Besides this romance, which, though in prose, partakes more 
markedly of the character of poetry, Sidney was the author, as we 
have hinted above, of a considerable number of Sonnets, some of 
very singular beauty, and of a short treatise entitled ' The Defense 
of Poesie,' the nature of which is perfectly expressed in the title. 
The beauty of our author's prose style is no less conspicuous in this 
work than the deep feeling which he exhibits for the value and the 
charms of poetry. The language, indeed, is itself poetry of no 
mean order, and in this work, no less than in the ' Arcadia,' we do 



CHAP, ni.] 



SIDNEY — SPENSER. 



69 



find in every line reason to confirm the judgment of Cowper, who 
was keenly alive to Sir Philip's meritS; and who thus qualifies his 
style : — 

" Sidney, warbler of poetic prose" 

He was mortally wounded by a musket-ball in the left thigh at the 
skirmish at Zutphen, September 22, 1586, and died on the 15th 
of October following, in his thirty-second year, and was buried in St. 
Paul's. To do, in so short a life, so much for immortality, is the lot 
of few ; of still fewer to excite, in dying, such universal sorrow as 
that which followed Sidney to the grave ) for in him the court lost 
its chiefest ornament, learning its steadiest patron, genius its boldest 
defender and fii-mest friend, and his country her most illustrious 
child — 

"The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword: 
The expectancy and rose of the fair state, 
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, 
The observed of all observers." 

The greatest English poet after Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, was 
born in London about the year 1553, that is, a year before Sidney, 
and educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. On leaving the 
University he retired (it is supposed in the quality of a private tutor) 
to the North of England, in which retirement he composed the first 
production which attracted notice to his youthful genius. This was 
' The Shepherd's Calendar,' a long poem divided into twelve parts or 
months, and consisting of pastoral dialogues of a plaintive and ama- 
tory character. The Italian taste then prevalent in Eui'ope, and 
which filled the literature of every country with imitations, more or 
less frigid, of the Arcadianisms of Gruarini and Sannazzaro, is per- 
haps more perceptible in Spenser than any author, even of the 
" Italianated Elizabethan age ; and it is singular to observe how 
universally this manner was adopted in the early essays of the young 
poets of the day. Babes," says the Scripture, "are fed with 
milk;'^ and it seems natural that the romantic genius of youth 
should nourish itself on the pure but somewhat insipid delicacies of 
the poetical " Grolden Age." Eager to give to the form of his work 
the originality which was necessarily wanting to its design, Spenser 
rejected the rather worn-out Corydons and Tityruses of the classical 
idyllists, and gave to his shepherds and his scenery as much of an 
English air as he could by adopting English names and describing 
English nature : the same result also was aimed at in the language, 
into which he strove to infuse the spirit of the antique, and at the 
same time of a rustic simplicity, by adopting a great deal of the now 
almost obsolete diction of Chaucer. His shepherds, however, are 
not much inferior in point of nature and pi-obability to the general 
run of pastoral personages — to the disguised courtiers who pipe and 
sing in Virgil's Mantuan shades, or the masquerading pedants of the 



70 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. HI. 



modern Italian school; in short, to none of these sham shepherds, 
always excepting the admirable rustics of Theocritus. The subjects 
of the various poems of the ' Shepherd's Calendar' are the same which 
form the curta supellex of ordinary pastorals : the hinds of Spenser 
are sufficiently " melancholy and gentlemanlike/' and pour out their 
melodious complaints without exciting any very deep sympathy in 
the reader. They remind us of young, thoughtful scholars, who 
have, "for very wantonness," put on the garb of rustics, and whose 
elegant and graceful thoughts are breathed in the language not of the 
field but of the study. 

This work, besides exercising the youthful poet's powers of diction 
and harmony, acquired for him the admiration and friendship of the 
learned Gabriel TIarvey, who, though fantastical in his literary tastes, 
and though for a time infecting Spenser with his own enthusiasm for 
his metrical whimsies, was of the greatest use to his modest and sen- 
sitive friend. The projects to which we have alluded were, among 
others, nothing less than the employment of the classical or syllabic 
mode of versification in English poetry. He has left us some most 
inimitable specimens of dactylic and iambic measures, which furnish 
a ludicrous proof of the inherent absurdity of the project. Spenser, 
too, has perpetrated some monstrous "classicisms" of this nature; 
and these show that not even the exquisite ear of the most harmoni- 
ous of our poets could render bearable the application of the prosody 
of quantity to a language essentially accentual in its metrical cha- 
racter. 

This curious literary folly, however, was at this period exceedingly 
epidemic; for similar attempts were made, and with exactly as much 
success, to naturalize the G-reek and Roman metres in the Italian, 
Spanish, and even the French languages. In German, however, 
the innovation has lasted (and with tolerable success) down to the 
present day. 

It was to Harvey that Spenser is supposed to have owed his intro- 
duction to Sir Philip Sidney, at whose ancestral seat of Penshurst 
the poet passed perhaps the brightest years of his unhappy life. 
We have stood beneath " Spenser's Oak" in the beautiful park of 
that venerable place, and dreamed of the hero and the poet — both 
still so young, yet with the halo of immortality already on their 
front, seated, "in colloquy sublime,'^ beneath those murmuring 
boughs. It was here that Spenser completed his ^ Shepherd's Calen- 
dar,' dedicating it, under the title of ' The Poet's Year,' to his young 
patron, " Maister Philip Sidney, worthy of all titles, both of learn- 
ing and chivalry.". Through the medium of Sidney the poet 
obtained the protection of the great Earl of Leicester, the favourite 
of Elizabeth, and uncle of " Maister Phihp ;" and through Leices- 
ter Spenser acquired the notice of his royal mistress. 

Our youthful poet now became a courtier, and forms one star — 



CHAP. III.] 



SPENSER AT COURT. 



71 



and one of the Ibriglitest too — of that glorious galaxy which gave 
such splendour to the court of the "Maiden Queen." 

But in leaving the green solitudes of Penshurst for the splendours 
of the court, Spenser was destined to exchange his freedom and his 
happiness for a chain only the heavier because it was of gold. He 
forgot the profound truth concealed in that oracular verse of the poet 
which so truly describes the proper atmosphere for a lettered life, — 

" Flumina amem sylvasque, inglorius;" — 

and he paid for his mistake, the heavy penalty of a life embittered 
by court disappointments, and finished in affliction. 

Though early distinguished by the favour of Elizabeth, his life at 
court seems to have been a nearly uninterrupted succession of morti- 
fications and disappointments. The very favour of the Earl of 
Leicester, powerful as it was, was not omnipotent, and in courts, as 
in the fairy tale, the talisman or charmed weapon, given to the 
adventurous knight by a friendly magician, often proves the very 
cause of his being attacked by a hostile enchanter. The very patron- 
age and protection of Leicester naturally drew upon Spenser the dis- 
like and suspicion of Lord Burleigh, then Chancellor and highly 
favoured by Elizabeth and the poet, in innumerable passages of his 
works, has alluded to the discouragement and coldness he experienced 
at the hands of the great lawyer. One stanza, indeed, describing 
the miseries of court dependence, has passed inefiaceably into the 
memory of every reader of English poetry. It is so painfully 
beautiful and so evidently sincere — written, as it were, with the very 
heart's blood of the poet — that we cannot forbear quoting it here :■ — 

"Full little knowest thou who hast not tried, 
What hell it is in suing long to bide ; 
To lose good days that might be better spent ; 
To waste long nights in pensive discontent ; 
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow ; 
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow ; 
To have thy princess grace, yet want her peers'' ; 
To have thy asking, yet wait many years; 
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares ; 
To eat thy heart in comfortless despairs: 
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, 
To spend, to give, to wait — to be undone." 

At length, however, Spenser received (in 1580) the appointment 
of secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, whom he accompanied to Ire- 
land, and under whose orders the poet seems to have distinguished 
himself as a man of business, for he was soon afterwards rewarded 
with a grant from the Crown of BOOO acres of land in the county of 
Cork, an estate which had previously formed part of the domains 
belonging to the Earls of Desmond, but which had been forfeited to 
the Crown. This is one of the numerous instances of Elizabeth's 
ingenious policy; for she thus rewarded a fiiithfd servant with a gift 



72 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. HI. 



of land which cost her nothing, and which the recipient (or " under- 
taker/' as he was termed) was bound by his contract to inhabit and 
keep in cultivation. A territory, however, recently devastated by 
contending armies with fire and sword, was a gift rather splendid in 
appearance than profitable in reality; and perhaps the principal 
advantage derived by Spenser from this donation was the necessity 
it imposed upon him of residing on his estate, and the leisure which 
it enabled him to dedicate to his literary pursuits. He took up his 
abode in the ancient castle of Kilcolman, situated in the midst of 
his beautiful but unproductive domain, and it is here that he com- 
posed the greater part of his immortal work — the poem of ^The 
Faerie Queene.' The scenery by which he was here surrounded is 
remarked for its beauty even in beautiful Ireland ; and it may not be 
fanciful to speculate how far the natural loveliness of the spot is 
reflected and reproduced in the rich pictures which fill the pages of 
the poem. 

It was here that the poet was visited by Ealeigh, then a young 
man, beginning, as Captain of the Gruards, that extraordinary and 
brilliant career which has rendered his name so illustrious at once 
for learning and for enterprise. To Raleigh — a kindred spirit- 
Spenser communicated his literary projects, and read to him the 
unfinished cantos of the ' Faerie Queene.' Among the various friend- 
ships and meetings recorded among great men, there is perhaps none 
on which we reflect with such interest as this : how delightful is it 
to picture to ourselves the Ariosto of England and the colonizer of 
Virginia seated together on the banks of Mulla, exchanging thoughts 
bright with immortality, 

"amongst the cooliy shade 
Of the green alders, by the Mulla's shore !" 

The " Shepherd of the Ocean,'' as Raleigh was styled in Spenser's 
poetical nomenclature, replaced for the bard, in some degree at least, 
the irreparable loss inflicted by the early death of Sidney — perhaps 
the severest blow inflicted on the sensitive heart of the poet during 
the earlier part of his career : the death of his youthful patron cast 
a gloom over the whole of his too short existence. 

In 1590 Spenser returned to England in order to present to 
Elizabeth the first part of the ' Faerie Queene and, insatiable as 
was that great sovereign in the matter of praise and adulation, with 
the exquisite tribute of Spenser's Muse she must have been pro- 
foundly gratified. All the learning and genius of an age remarkable 
for learning and genius were exhausted in supplying the Maiden 
Monarch with incessant clouds of elegant and poetical incense ; and 
among all the worshippers in the temple none were certainly more 
devoted or more capable than Spenser. The annals of court adula- 
tion are in general among the most humiliating pages of human folly 



CHAP, m.] SPENSER I HIS RETURN TO LONDON. 



73 



and absurdity ; but the age of Elizabeth was singular and fortunate 
in one respect : the greatness of the sovereign's character was not 
unworthy of the sublimest strains of panegyric, and the greatest 
among poets — for Shakspeare and Spenser both praised, in deathless 
verse, this extraordinary ruler — found in the achievements and the 
wisdom of their patroness a subject which they could adorn, but 
hardly exaggerate. The queen expressed her approbation of the 
poem by conferring on the author a pension of 50/. per annum — in 
estimating which reward we must consider the much higher value of 
money at that period : and Spenser then probably returned to Ire- 
land ; for in 1595 he published his pastoral of ' Colin Clout,' and in 
1596 the second part of the ^Faerie Queene.' It must not however 
be supposed that the poet had no occupation during this period 
excepting such as he found in the strenua inertia" — the laborious 
.abstraction of a literary life : he was employed actively and uninter- 
ruptedly in the service of the state ', for, after passing through many 
subordinate employments, we find him about this time, Clerk of the 
Council for the province of Munster, and exhibiting the knowledge 
he had acquired of the character and prospects of the conquered 
nation in his interesting prose work entitled View of the State 
of Ireland.-' This book, the production of one who was at the same 
time a poet and a statesman, bears every mark of its author's double 
quality : it gives a most curious and evidently faithful description of 
the manners of the Celtic inhabitants of the country, and contains 
many wise hints for the subjection and civilizing of that warlike 
race. It is true that some of the measures recommended by Spenser 
are of a violent and coercive character but we should be unwise to 
expect in a writer of the sixteenth century a tone of mildness and 
toleration unknown in politics previous to the nineteenth. 

During the whole of Spenser's residence in Ireland, he appears 
to have made frequent voyages to his own countr^^, and seems to 
have been agitated by an incessant and feverish discontentment — dis- 
satisfied probably with the very reward conferred upon him by the 
queen — a reward which condemned him to reside in a barbarous and 
disturbed country, and deprived him of the pleasures and society of 
the court. This honourable banishment under the disguise of ad- 
vancement was perhaps an ingenious contrivance of the profound and 
tortuous policy of Spenser's great opponent, Burleigh, who thus 
removed the dangerous fascinations of Spenser's manners and genius 
far from the sphere of the court, and thus deprived the party of 
Leicester of a hold upon Elizabeth's capricious and impressionable 
vanity. 

In 1597 Spenser retired for the last time to Ireland, and shortly 
afterwards the flame of popular discontent, communicated from the 
furious outburst which, under the name of "Tyrone's Rebellion," 
Lad been raging for some years in Ulster, swept over his retreat at 



74 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. HI. 



Kilcolman Castle, and drove Spenser, a heartbroken and ruined man, 
to die in sorrow and distress in London. In liis offices of Clerk of 
the Council, and afterwards of Sheriff of Cork, Spenser had probably 
given but too much grounds for the accusation of injustice and op- 
pression brought against hira by the Irish, and exaggerated by the 
natural indignation of a proud and savage people uneasy under a 
recent yoke. In October, 1598, the Castle of Kilcolman was at- 
tacked and burned by the insurgents, and Spenser, with difficulty 
saving himself and his wife from the fury of the victors, escaped to 
England. In the hurry of leaving his blazing residence, however, 
either from the imminence of personal danger or from one of those 
frightful mistakes so likely to happen at such terrific moments, the 
poet's infant child was left behind, and perished with the house. 
Spenser reached London, ruined, heartbroken, and despairing, and, 
after lingering for three months, he died, in King Street, West- 
minster, on the 16th of January, 1599. 

He was buried in Westminster Abbey, near the tomb of Chaucer. 

The following is an account of the principal poems of Spenser, at 
least of such as are not alluded to in the foregoing pages : — * The 
Tears of the Muses,' and ' Mother Hubbard's Tale,' published in 
1591; ^Daphnaida,' 1592; The 'Amoretti' and ^ Epithalanium' — 
two works descriptive of his courtship and marriage, the latter one 
of the noblest hymeneal songs in any language — in 1595; and the 
^ Elegy on Astrophil,' a lament on the death of the illustrious Sidney, 
at the same period. We have hinted that the ' Fairy Queen' was 
given to the world in detached portions and at long intervals of time : 
the dates of these various publications are nearly as follows : — 
Books I., II., and HI. appeared together in January 1589-90; IV., 
v., and VL in 1596. 

The design of the whole poem, if completed, would have given us 
one of the most splendid works of romantic fiction in which Chivalry 
ever pronounced the oracles of Wisdom : and we may judge, by the 
unfinished portion of this Palace of Honour, what would have been 
the gorgeous effect of the whole majestic structure. Spenser sup- 
posed the Fairy Queen to appear in a vision to Prince Arthur, who, 
awaking deeply enamoured, resolves on seeking his unearthly mistress 
in Faery Land. The poet then represents the Fairy Queen as 
holding her solemn annual feast during twelve days, on each of which 
a perilous adventure ds undertaken by some particular knight; each 
of the twelve knights typifying some moral virtue. " The first," to 
use the words of Chambers's abridgment of the plan, "is the Red- 
cross Knight, expressing Holiness; the second, Sir Guyon, or Tem- 
perance ; and the third, Britomartis, ' a lady knight,' representing 
Chastity. There was thus a blending of chivalry and religion in the 
design of the 'Faery Queen.' Besides his personification of the 
abstract virtues, the poet made his allegorical personages and their 



CHAP. III.] 



SPENSER: THE FAERIE QUEEN. 



75 



adventures represent historical characters and events. The queen, 
Grloriana, and the huntress, Belphoebe, are both symbolical of Queen 
Elizabeth ; the adventures of the Redcross Knight shadow forth the 
history of the Church of England ; and the distressed knight is 
Henry IV. The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Books contain the legend 
of Cambel and Triamond, or Friendship Artegal, or Justice ; and 
Sir Calidore, or Courtesy. A double allegory is contained in these 
cantos, as in the previous ones: Artegal is the poet's friend and 
patron, Lord Grrey; and various historical events are related in the 
knight's adventures. Half of the original design was thus finished ; 
six of the twelve adventures and moral virtues were produced : but 
unfortunately the world saw only some fragments more of the 
work." 

Even were we not fully aware of the great general influence 
exerted on the age of Elizabeth by the taste for Italian poetry, we 
should be easily enabled to trace its effect in modifying the genius 
of Spenser. The ' Faery Queen' is written in a peculiar versification 
to which we have given the name of the " Spenserian stanza." It 
is really nothing more than the Italian " ottava rima," or eight-lined 
stapza, to which Spenser, in order to give to the English the linked 
sweetness long drawn out" of the ^' favella Toscana," most wisely 
added a ninth line, whose billowy flow admirably winds up the 
swelling and varying music of each stanza. This measure is as 
difficult to write with effect in English as it is easy in Italian, a lan- 
guage in which the rhymes are so abundant, and the rhythmic 
cadence so inherent, that it requires almost an effort to avoid giving 
a metrical form even to prose : and Spenser has wielded this com- 
plicated instrument with such consummate mastery and grace, that 
the rich abundant melody of his versification almost oppresses the ear 
with its overwhelming sweetness. Like the soft undulation of a 
Tropic sea, it bears us onward dreamily with easy swell and falls, by 
wizard islands of sunshine and of rest, by bright phantom-peopled 
realms and old enchanted cities. 

The genius of Spenser is essentially pictorial. There are no 
scenes, soft or terrible, which ever glowed before the intellectual 
gaze of the great painters which have more reality than his ; like the 
gallery so exquisitely described by Byron : — 

*' There rose a Carlo Dolce, or a Titian, 
Or wilder group of savage Salvatore's ; 
There danced Albano's boys, and here the sea shone 
With Vernet's ocean lights ; and there the stories 
Of martyrs awed, as Spaguoletto tainted 
His brush with all the blood of all the sainted. 

There sweetly spread a landscape of Lorraine ; 

There Rembrandt made his darkness equal light ; 
Or gloomy Caravaggio's gloomier stain 

Bronzed o'er some lean and stoic anchorite." 

G* 



76 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. III. 



"His command of imagery/' says Caiiipbell, the truth and beauty 
of whose criticisms will form our best apology for adopting them 
instead of our own, is wide, easy, and luxuriant. He threw the 
soul of harmony into our verse, and made it more warmly, tenderly, 
and magnificently descriptive than it ever was before, or, with a few 
exceptions, than it has ever been since. It must certainly be owned 
that in description he exhibits nothing of the brief strokes and robust 
power which characterise the very greatest poets ; but we shall no- 
where find more airy and expansive images of visionary things, a 
sweeter tone of sentiment, or a finer flush in the colours of language, 
than in this Rubens of English poetry.^' 

But perhaps the best and most comprehensive criticism upon 
Spenser's merit is that recorded by Pope in one of his letters to 
Spence : — " After my reading a canto of Spenser two or three days 
ago to an old lady between seventy and eighty, she said that I had 
been showing her a collection of pictures. She said very right." 

The chief defect of this admirable poet is one almost inseparable 
from allegory in general, and particularly allegory so complicated as 
that of Spenser, where the feigned resemblance often represents 
several distinct and diiferent types or objects. It cannot be denied 
that there is a great want of human interest in the ' Faery Queen,' 
and that the events of his drama have frequently no perceptible con- 
nection with each other or bearing upon the supposed catastrophe. 
Moreover, there is no bond of interest uniting the several cantos of 
the poem, for they are separate and detached adventures, performed 
by different and unconnected characters, and very feebly linked 
together by their being supposed to be undertaken at the comraanil 
of Gloriana. Arthur is, it is true, the nominal hero, but he is soon 
forgotten by the reader ; and his reappearance at the end of the poem 
would hardly sufl&ce to incorporate into one living body the " disjecta 
membra poetse" scattered through the various exploits of the twelve 
knights. In fact, criticism can only enlarge here the definition of 
Pope's old lady, and say that the cantos of Spenser, admirably beau- 
tiful as they are, glowing with the most varied colours of fancy and 
imagination, want, like the pictures in a gallery, a mutual dependence 
and connection. 

Exquisitely diversified, too, as is the melody of Spenser's verse 
and manner of' treatment, we cannot disguise from ourselves a feeling 
that it is injured by some tinge of that lusciousness and -dilatation 
perceptible in the style of Tasso and Ariosto, whose writings it so 
much resembles. This over-sweetness and luxuriance seems insepa- 
rable from the genius of the Italian language, but harmonizes less 
naturally with the less sensuous character of our Northern poesy. 

In the innumerable allegories which people the enchanted scenery 
of Spenser, we are sometimes shocked with those incongruous details 
which make us laugh in the engravings of the emblematic Otto 



CHAP. IV.] BACON — HIS BIRTH AND EDUCATION. 



77 



Venius, where either the attribute distinguishing the moral quality 
to be personified is so dark and far-fetched as to be absolutely unin- 
telligible without explanation, or where it is of a nature unfit for the 
purposes of art. Those who are acquainted with the works of Ru- 
bens (the pupil of Venius), to whom Spenser has been so well com- 
pared by Campbell, will be at no loss to understand our meaning. 

Like many great poets of ancient and modern times, Spenser 
sought to give vigour and solemnity to his language by a plentiful 
adoption of archaisms, words, and expressions consecrated by their 
having been employed by older authors. Virgil gave an air of anti- 
quity and simplicity to the Eneid by using multitudes of venerable 
words employed by Ennius. Spenser imitated Chaucer; just as La 
Fontaine gave naivete and edge to his sly satire by an infusion of 
the admirable expressions of Villon and Rabelais : and we hardly 
agree with those critics who have complained of our poet's freedom 
in this respect. If the rough but time-honoured stones taken from 
the Cyclopean walls of old Ennius be allowed to give dignity to the 
graceful Ionic edifice of Virgil, we do not see why the simple diction 
of Chaucer should not harmonize well with the rich elegance of the 
^ Faery Queen' — the rather that the latter work is, after all, a Tale 
of Chivalry — a Romance. 



CHAPTER IV. 

BACON. 

His Birth and Education — ' View of the State of Europe' — His Career — Im- 
peached for Corruption — Death — His Character — Stale ot" Philosophy in the 
Sixteenth Century — Its Corruptions and Defects — Bacon's System — Not a 
Discoverer — The New Philosophy — Analysis of the Instauratio: I. De 
Augmentis; II. Novum Organum ; III. Sylva Sylvarum ; IV. Scala Intel- 
lectiis ; V. Prodromi ; VI. Philosophia Secunda — The Baconian Logic — 
Style — His Minor Works. 

Francis Bacon, the Luther of Philosophy, was born in London 
on the 22d of January, 1561. He was the son of Sir Nicholas 
Bacon, a distinguished lawyer and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal in 
the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The subject of our present remarks 
was sent, while yet a boy of thirteen, to the University of Cambridge; 
and though it appears to have been customary at this period to begin 
tho public part of education much earlier than is now usual, we can 
hardly be wrong in deeming that Bacon must have given proofs of a 
most precocious intellect, when we learn that when hardly sixteen he 
had formed distinct notions respecting the defects of the Aristotelian 



78 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. IV. 



system of philosophy, and had no doubt already conceived the out- 
line of that gigantic plan of destruction and innovation which has 
made his name immortal. After remaining four years at Cambridge 
he went abroad, and travelled in France, probably intending to pass 
several years in acquiring practical experience in the various courts 
of the continent; but the death of his father, in 1579, suddenly re- 
called him to England ; not however before he had given proof of the 
success with which he had employed his time in foreign countries, 
by the production of a most sagacious and valuable essay ' On the 
State of Europe.^ The political knowledge exhibited in this little 
treatise, and the profound wisdom and acuteness displayed in it, would 
astonish us, as the work of one hardly entered upon the period of 
adolescence, if any manifestation of intellect could surprise us on the 
part of this astonishing person. It is obvious that he had already 
felt the mysterious vocation of genius — that secret oracle which points 
out to the highest order of minds the true path which Providence 
intended them to pursue, a path from which they never deviate with 
impunity. Bacon so strongly felt that the true bent of his character 
would lead him to consecrate his future life to sublime and solitary 
meditation, and was so proudly and justly confident in the yet unex- 
ercised strength of his intellect, that he entreated Burleigh, the 
powerful favourite and Chancellor, to procure him from the state 
some provision which would enable him to prosecute his studies in 
uninterrupted leisure. 

Burleigh, however, refused to accede to a proposition which must 
have appeared then, as it would now, so extraordinary and unusual ; 
and the young philosopher was obliged to devote himself to the study 
of the law, which he pursued with industry and success. Bacon's 
after career affords a melancholy example of the danger of neglecting 
that inward voice which calls, as we have said a few lines back, the 
sublimer intellects among mankind to the true sphere of their exer- 
tions, whispering to the mental, as the Daemon of Socrates to the 
moral, ear the true direction of the course. 

While studying the law in G-ray's Inn, Bacon sketched out the 
first plan of the ' Instauration,' and probably had decided upon the 
general purport and arrangement of the great works which contain 
his conclusions. The rest of his personal career may be described in 
a few words : the task is a melancholy and humiliating one. He 
rapidly passed through the inferior dignities of the law and of the 
state, being appointed queen's counsel in 1590, and in 1593 chosen 
member of parliament for the county of Middlesex. Both in the 
courts of law and in the House of Commons he was distinguished 
for the vastness of his knowledge and for the brilliancy of his elo- 
quence ; but he was also notorious, even in that age, for his subser- 
viency to the most iniquitous despotism of the court. Having on 
one occasion (we select a single example from among many) advo- 



CHAP. IV.] 



bacon's political CAREEPv. 



79 



cated before the Commons, with all the power which marked his 
mind, a measure of a popular tendency, he was weak enough, on the 
fii'st intimation of his independence having displeased the sovereign, 
to renounce, with shameless facility, the convictions which he had 
just before been asserting, and even to apologise for having enter- 
tained them. But this great man was reserved for yet deeper degra- 
dation. His political conduct continued to present a worthy con- 
tinuation to this lamentable commencement. Obeying every fickle 
current of court favour, he first deserted the party of the Cecils (i. e. 
of his first protector and kinsman Burleigh) for that of the unfortu- 
nate Essex, who, failing in obtaining for his new proselyte the dignity 
of attorney-general, rewarded his apostacy with the gift of an estate 
at Twickenham worth two thousand pounds. 

Bacon's attachment to Essex was as mercenary as had been his 
adherence to Burleigh, and, on the disgrace and impeachment of the 
Earl, the great lawyer showed a base eagerness to aid the overthrow 
of the unhappy and illustrious victim, exhibiting a ferocious violence 
hardly exceeded in the long and black annals of mercenary tribunals 
and subservient advocates. In order to gratify the court, Bacon 
crowned his apostacy by composing a ^ Declaration of the Treasons 
and Practices of the Earl of Essex.' In the foul descent from base- 
ness to baseness which marks the whole of Bacon's political career, we 
cannot find any extenuating circumstances, except indeed such as trans- 
fer his guilt from deliberate depravity to a servile calculation of interest. 
It is consoling indeed to reflect that there has been in no part of 
human conduct so great an improvement in point of morality as in 
the change which has taken place in political relations from the six- 
teenth century to the present day. The fatal prevalence of that 
atrocious and infernal policy which is systematised with such a hideous 
minuteness in the pages of Machiavelli, had extended itself from the 
petty Italian states, where it first appeared, to all the countries of 
Europe; and that dreadful sophism that "we may do evil that good 
may come" had destroyed the natural barriers between right and 
wrong in public affairs. It is but a poor excuse to say that Bacon 
was no worse than many of his contemporaries ; still less to attempt 
to palliate ingratitude and cowardice by alleging that Bacon deserted 
his benefactors and attacked the fallen without the inducement of 
, passion and animosity : the avarice, the ambition, the cool calculation 
of profit, which was the cause of such wretched servility, is certainly 
not less able to excite our contempt, than a similar conduct dictated 
by sincere hatred or a natural depravity would be capable of inspiring 
us with detestation. The truth is that Bacon, though not personally 
avaricious, was cursed with that passion for state, splendour, and 
magnificence which is so frequently found in a highly imaginative 
character; and being always plunged in difficulties, he took, v/ith 
that unscrupulousness too common at the period when he lived, the 
shortest way to supply his incessant needs. 



80 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. IV. 



In 1603, at the beginning of the reign of James I., Bacon was 
knighted, and appointed successively king's counsel, solicitor-general, 
and attorney-general (the last dignity having been attained in 1613), 
and he fully justified whatever confidence the court could have placed 
in his subserviency and pliability : so far indeed had he forgotten the 
great principles of the law whose unworthy minister he was, that he 
assisted in inflicting on a certain Paacham, an aged and obscure cler- 
gyman, accused of treason, the cruelties of the torture, in order to 
extort a confession by a means in no way countenanced by the Eng- 
lish constitution. It was at this period that Bacon married the 
daughter of a wealthy alderman, and seems in this, as well as so 
many other acts of his life, to have consulted interest. He still con- 
tinued to advance in his career of ambition, and in 1619 reached the 
highest dignity to which an English subject can aspire, having been 
named in that year Lord High Chancellor, with the title of Baron 
Yerulam. This rank he afterwards exchanged, by the protection of 
Yilliers — the vain and haughty favourite of James — for the still 
more exalted style of Viscount St. Alban's. In this advance he 
probably received from Yilliers the hire for some new act of 
obsequiousness to the favourite's power, for he allowed the min- 
ister to interfere in and control the exercise of his high judicial 
functions — a crime of which he was accused before parliament, and 
of which (together with many minor instances of corruption) he 
proclaimed himself guilty in a confession written with his own 
hand. On being asked, by a committee sent for the purpose from 
the House of Lords, whether he confessed the authenticity and the 
truth of this humiliating avowal, he is reported to have said, with 
an expression of sorrow and repentance which under any other 
circumstances would have been deeply touching, " It is my act, my 
hand, my heart ; I beseech your lordships, press not upon a broken 
reed." Being fully convicted of these grave charges, he was de- 
prived by parliament of the office he had so unworthily prostituted, 
and sent, with the dark stain of a just condemnation upon him, to 
finish his life in retirement and disgrace. 

He retired to his estates, and, devoting the remainder of his life 
to those grand speculations which have survived his follies and his 
crimes, and let us hope also to repentance for his past errors, he died 
in 1626, deeply in debt, leaving, as he says himself, with a noble 
sense of the services he had rendered to the human race, " his name 
and memory to foreign nations, and to mine own country after some 
time is passed over." 

It is singular enough that the death of this great philosopher 
should have been caused by a cold caught in performing a physical 
experiment, and that he should have been, not the apostle only, but 
also the martyr of science. It is related that, travelling by High- 
gate, near London, in wintry weather, he was struck with the idea 



CHAP. IV.] bacon's character — DEATH. 



81 



that flesh might be preserved by means of snow as well as by salting : 
he bought a fowl, and, descending from his coach, assisted with his 
own hands in making an immediate trial of the project by stuffing 
the hen with snow ; and in doing this he is said to have received a 
chill, which, aggravated by his being immediately put into a damp 
bed at Lord ArundeFs house, caused his death in a very few days. 
But even when his end was approaching, the great philosopher, with 
" the ruling passion strong in death," could not forbear communicating 
to a friend, in a letter which he dictated, being too ill to write him- 
self, that his experiment "had succeeded excellently." 

A monument was erected over his grave by his faithful friend and 
disciple. Sir Thomas Meautys, who was buried at his master's feet : 
and this monument, executed after the design of Sir Henry Wotton, 
a man imbued with a taste for Italian art, has a peculiar interest as 
being a portrait of the philosopher, who is represented in his usual 
dress seated in an attitude of profound meditation ; and the work bears 
the appropriate inscription, " Sic sedebat." 

^ Of Bacon's personal manners and demeanour all that we know is 
calculated to give us a most extraordinary idea of the charms of his 
conversation and the amiability of his character. Ben Jonson, 
himself so remarkable for his own wonderful stores of learning and 
powers of conversation, and who was, too, no very indulgent critic, 
has expressed his admiration of Bacon's eloquence and ready wit. 
It is consoling to find that, while the conduct of the politician presents 
so many points for the severest reprobation of the moralist, the 
character of the man was as attractive as his intellect was sublime. 
Bacon was a most profuse and generous master to his dependants; 
and his flagitious avidity for money may be as justly attributed to an 
easiness of temper, preventing him from being able to say " no" to 
a petitioner, and to those habits of inattention to small matters which 
so often accompany the literary character, as to the darker vices to 
which they might be ascribed by severer judges. Osborn, a contem- 
porary writer, most probably gives the result of personal experience 
in the following description of Bacon's conversational powers : — " In 
all companies he did appear a good proficient, if not a master, in 
those arts entertained for the subject of every one's discourse. His 
most casual talk deserveth to be written. As I have been told, his 
earliest copies required no great labour to render them competent for 
the nicest judgment. I have heard him entertain a country lord in 
the proper terms relating to horses and dogs; and at another time 
out-cant a London chirurgeon. Nor did an easy falling into argu- 
ment appear less an ornament in him. The cars of his hearers 
received more gratification than trouble; and were no less sorry when 
he came to conclude, than displeased with any who did interrupt 
him." The learned and amusing Howell calls him " a man of 
recondite science, born for the salvation of learning, and, I think, 



82 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. 



[CHAP. IV. 



the eloquentest that was born in this isle.^^ But of his eloquence 
we shall be able to give a more exact idea when we come to speak 
of the style of his writings. 

In order to form even an approximative notion respecting the 
nature and importance of the immense revolution produced in 
science by the writings of Bacon, it is indispensable to have 
some general idea of the state of science when he wrote. Yague, 
general, and superficial eulogiums have done real injury to the fame 
of this great man ; for they have propagated very false notions 
respecting the nature of the revolution he effected, and respecting 
the means by which that revolution was brought about. Among 
other vulgar errors of this nature, one of the most dangerous is that 
which consists in considering Bacon as a discoverer, and attributing 
to him the invention of analysis. This is degrading a great man to 
the level of a quack. Bacon's philosophy,'' as D' Alembert pro- 
foundly says, "was too wise to astonish;'^ and as to the inductive 
method of discovering truth, that is as old as Aristotle, or rather as 
old as human reason itself. 

The simple account of the great Baconian innovation will be sub- 
stantially as follows. The Aristotelian method had reigned in all 
the schools and universities of Europe from the period of the revival 
of letters in the fourteenth century ; nay, it may be considered as 
having existed during the whole period of the dark ages; and thus 
to have continued in action, with various degrees, it is true, of culti- 
vation and extension, uninterruptedly from the time of Aristotle him- 
self. The acute and disputatious spirit of the ancient Greeks, so 
ingenious, so inquisitive, so paradoxical, was calculated to abuse the 
opportunity for idle and fruitless speculation afforded by the general 
tone of the Aristotelian logic ; and this word-catching and quibbling 
— in short, this habit of arguing to abstract conclusions on insufficient 
premises — was not likely to diminish among the schools of Alexan- 
dria and Byzantium. The perverted ingenuity of the Lower Empire 
wvis still further sharpened by the part which the Orientals now began 
to play in philosophy. The wildest fantasies and irregularities of 
Eastern subtlety were thus added to the Grreek passion for paradox 
and sophistry, and it was in this state, debased with these admix- 
tures, that the schools of the middle ages received the philosophy of 
the Stagyrite. Now the monastic spirit was characterised by all the 
various peculiarities together. It was as dreamy and fantastical as 
the Oriental genius, as subtle and disputative as the Grreek, and as 
sophistical in its tone as the Alexandrian speculations : and to all 
these sources of corruption was added another, more dangerous than 
any we have mentioned, in the circumstance of the Aristotelian 
philosophy being made part of the ecclesiastical system — that is to 
say, the alliance between the theology of Borne and the philosophy of 
the Lycseum. 



CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 



83 



Orthodoxy having once taken under her fatal protection a particu- 
lar system of philosophy, the consequences were equally injurious to 
the one and the other ; for the Church of Rome was thus not only 
compelled to recognise by her adherence, and protect by her authority, 
the most false conclusions of the sophical system, but deprived her- 
self (through her assumption of infallibility) of the power of ever 
renouncing any conclusion, however absurd, which she had once 
sanctioned. On the other hand, the philosophical system, thus 
unnaturally connected with religious orthodoxy, became at once timid 
and extravagant, appealing not to sense and reason for the support 
of its deductions, but to tradition and authority, and maintaining its 
supremacy, not by arguments, but by persecution and violence, by 
the sword, the dungeon, and the stake. 

There are few episodes in the great drama of past ages more 
wonderful, and at the same time more melanchol}^, than the spectacle 
afforded by the intense mental activity of the middle ages. What 
laborious and powerful intellects were there, wasting their energies 
on the vainest of empty speculations ! Incessantly they argued and 
concluded — but their arguments proved nothing, and their conclusions 
were but idle phrases : 

*' They found no end, in wandering mazes lost." 

"We are not, however, to suppose that, at a period of such profound 
and universal agitation as that which preceded the Reformation, the 
Aristotelian philosophy, though defended by all the thunders of 
orthodoxy, could pass unquestioned, and meet with universal adhe- 
sion. No ; there were bold spirits who dared to question the sound- 
ness of its principles, and examine their reasonableness on grounds 
of common sense. The great dispute between the Nominalists and 
Realists, by accustoming men to hear the boldest speculations upon 
abstract subjects, prepared the way for the ultimate overthrow of the 
system which had so long reigned triumphant over the mind. Luther, 
in attacking the Romish Church, most undoubtedly struck a heavy 
though indirect blow against the system of philosophy supported by 
that Church ; and in the enormous outburst of activity which 
characterises that wonderful epoch many speculators had revolted 
against the tyranny exercised on human thought under the usurped 
and much-abused name of Aristotle. In the sciences particularly, 
there were many great men, who, " falling upon evil days and evil 
tongues,'^ have come down to posterity as mountebanks, as visionaries, 
or as impostors, but who, had they lived at a more auspicious time 
would probably command our veneration as lights of science and 
benefactors to their kind : Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, Roger 
Bacon, Giordano Bruno, Cardan, and Campanella. 

A vain reliance on the supposed adequate power of human ratioci- 
nation kept the philosophers of the Middle Ages reasoning incessantly , 



84 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. IV. 



in a circle, or diverting their attention from the only rational object 
in philosophy; that is, as the very word implies, "a love for, or 
search after, truth. They knew not, or they despised, the immense 
practical and physical benefits which might flow from a well-directed 
inquiry into the laws of nature ; and it was reserved for the intellect 
of an Englishman — "divini ingenii vir, Franciscus Bacon de Yeru- 
lamio/' as he is styled by Leibnitz — to show that science is only 
valuable in proportion as it is practical and productive. 

The principal defect of the Aristotelian method was the habit 
which - it encouraged of generalising too rapidly upon insufficient 
grounds : that is, of applying some principle or law of nature to phe- 
nomena of similar, but not identical, conditions. In short, its es- 
sential vice was a neglect of the great rule which teaches us to observe 
with particular care the points of resemblance and dissimilitude ex- 
isting between individual phenomena, or classes of phenomena. The 
knowledge possessed by the ancients with respect to the true proper- 
ties of bodies and the nature of physical operations was vague and 
limited enough ; though we cannot be surprised at this imperfection 
of knowledge at a period when the mechanical aids to observation 
were in so primitive a state. For want of instruments they trans- 
ferred to pure reason those duties which can only be effectually per- 
formed by accurate observation and patient experiment. These re- 
marks will perhaps appear to possess more weight when we reflect 
that in those sciences independent of experiment, and whose deduc- 
tions are to be arrived at by the sole exercise of the ratiocinative 
faculty unaided by practical trials, the intellect of the ancient world 
had advanced so far that modern ages have made little or no additions 
to the mass of human knowledge. In geometry, for example, a 
science which investigates abstract properties of space, and which 
consequently is independent of experiment, modern times have hardly, 
if at all, extended the frontiers beyond the limits reached by the 
schools of Alexandria. 

But we have hitherto spoken of the ancient philosophy in its pure 
and normal state ; we must not forget the corruptions to which it 
was in its very nature exposed, and under which it ultimately suc- 
cumbed. The grand and sublime speculations of Aristotle, exhibiting, 
as we have seen, a noble but misplaced confidence in the omnipotence 
of human reason, degenerated in the Middle Ages, and under the 
influences vfhich we have essayed to indicate, into a mere spirit of 
empty subtlety and ingenious trifling; a system at once of timid 
servility to precedent and prescription, and rash and illogical general- 
ization : it was still 

" Uncertain and unsettled, 
Deep versed in books, and shallow in itself, 
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys 
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge, 
As children gathering pebbles on the shore." 



CHAP. IV.] 



BACON NOT A DISCOVERER. 



85 



The old philosopliy, whicli in its youth and vigour liad never been 
fruitful, gradually fell into dotage as its age advanced, and its latest 
period of existence was characterized by the same weakness which 
accompanies in man extreme old age — a senile and senseless garrulity, 
a perpetual recurrence of the same worn-out topics, and a stiff and 
obstinate assertion of its own infallibility : — 

" Everlasting dictates crowd her tongue, 
Perversely grave or positively wrong." 

Bacon has most profoundly and acutely compared old systems to 

children : quippe qui," he says, " ad garriendum prompti sint, 

gcnerare non possint." 

Our great philosopher was the first to perceive clearly the two pre- 
dominant vices of the older method — its sterility and its stationarj'- 
character ; and he was the first to discover a remedy for these defects. 
His own system is characterized above all its other merits by the 
qualities of utility and capability of progressive development. It is, 
in short, eminently and essentially practical; the great reformer 
rightly considering that utility is the only measure of excellence in 
any science. He never pretended to be a discoverer, and as invariabl}'' 
disclaimed that title, rendering ample justice to the merits of the 
great men who had devoted themselves to science, and expressing 
his conviction that the unproductive state of science was not to be 
attributed to any want of intellect in the philosophers who had pre- 
ceded him, but simply and solely to a radical defect in their method. 
"Francis Bacon thought in this manner: The knowledge whereof 
the world is possessed, especially that of nature, extendeth not to 
magnitude and certainty of works." This is the key to Bacon's 
whole system, and this must excite our gratitude for the eminently 
practical character of his mind. It is this circumstance which has 
given value and vitality to what he has produced. How fortunate 
is it for the destinies of science that Bacon was a man of active life, 
occupied during his whole existence with real interests ! it was thus 
that he not only saw, with the clear and steady eye of common sense, 
the exact state of the disease which it was his aim to cure, but was 
enabled to avoid pedantry and vain speculations in the administering 
of the remedy. " There is not anything in being or action,'' to use 
his own comprehensive words, "which could not be drawn and col- 
lected into contemplation and doctrine." 

It now remains to examine the means which he adopted to bring 
about this immense revolution in the empire of human thought. We 
shall find that his great principle was to show how universally the 
previous systems neglected the middle links in that vast chain of 
facts connecting the general principle or law of nature with the remote 
and individual phenomena. " Axiomata infima non multum ab ex- 
perientia, nuda discrepant : suprema vero ilia et generalissima (quse 
habentur) notionaria sunt et abstracta, et nil habent solidi. At media 



86 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. IV. 



sunt axiomata ilia vera et solida et Yiva^ in quibus humanae res et 
fortunie sitae sunt, et supra hsec quoque, tandem ipsa ilia generalissi- 
ma, talia scilicet quae non abstracta sint, sed per haec media vere 
limitantur.'^ The vice of the older philosophy was the passing from 
one of the extremes of this chain, abruptly, and " per saltum," to 
the other. 

As we have already mentioned, Bacon has never preferred any 
claim to the character of a scientific discoverer; his mission was a 
more exalted and a vaster one : the object of his works was to " note 
the deficiency'^ in the various species of knowledge composing the 
philosophical systems of the world; to distinguish with accuracy 
which among the various lines taken by investigation were capable 
of leading to certain, useful, and productive results ; then to establish 
the method to be pursued in following those preferable lines when 
once ascertained ; and finally to give examples or specimens of his 
own method applied and put in action. 

In contemplating this gigantic scheme, it is impossible to admire 
sufficiently the genius which has traced with prophetic accuracy the 
paths of sciences which were not then in existence; the union of 
good sense and enthusiasm in that mind, which, while limiting in one 
direction the advance of human knowledge, encouraged us to push 
on, in another, to a development so remote as to be even yet unde- 
fined ; or the rich and masculine eloquence in which these sublime 
thoughts are communicated. 

The great project which has immortalised the "Lord Chancellor 
of human nature'' was conceived at a very early age. " Such noble 
ideas are most congenial to the sanguine spirit of youth,'' as Hallam 
justly remarks, " and to its ignorance of the extent of labour it un- 
dertakes." Bacon himself mentions, as one .of his earliest produc- 
tions, a work bearing the somewhat ambitious title ' Temporis Partus 
Maximus,^ which is now lost to us, but which probably contained the 
. germ or embryo of his system. We will now give a short account 
of his great productions, in the hope of thus rendering his philosophy 
more intelligible in its unity to our readers — a precaution which has 
been too much neglected by those who have written on the subject, 
and who have treated Bacon's works rather as separate and indepen- 
dent treatises, than as parts of one vast edifice or creation. 

In 1597 appeared the first edition of his Essays, a little work on 
miscellaneous subjects, which contains perhaps more of wisdom, 
novelty, and profound remark than any book of equal size. that was 
ever composed. The subjects of these short treatises are often of a 
most trite and ordinary kind, but yet it is impossible to*" read them, 
even for the fiftieth time, without being struck by some n-^w and 
original remark, or seeing some thought placed in a new and original 
light. "The Essays," says Stewart, "are the best known and most 
popular of all his works. It is one of those where the superiority 
of his genius appears to the greatest advantage ; the novelty and 



CHAP. IV.] 



THE NEW PHILOSOPHY. 



87 



depth of his reflections often receiving a strong relief from the trite- 
ness of the subject. It may be read from beginning to end in^a few- 
hours ; and yet, after the twentieth perusal, one seldom fails to re- 
mark in it something unobserved before. This, indeed, is a charac- 
teristic of all Bacon's writings, and is only to be accounted for by the 
inexhaustible aliment they furnish to our own thoughts, and the 
sympathetic activity they impart to our torpid faculties." 

The best way which we can follow to give a clear idea of Bacon's 
gigantic plan for the restoration of philosophy will be to present our 
readers with a sort of programme of the whole system of works in 
which he develops the various parts of his project; and this, arranged 
in a tabular form, will, we think, avoid the danger so very natural 
for persons to fall into with respect to the details of Bacon's great 
intellectual temple. That so vast a design could ever have been 
projected by a single person is more wonderful than that some parts 
of the work were never executed. We have, however, enough to 
prove with what justice the learned men of all countries have united, 
during a period of nearly two centuries and a half, in considering 
Bacon as the father of experimental philosophy. Having given this 
conspectus or synopsis, we shall proceed to examine more in detail 
the various works composing the great Yerulamian Cycle, and thus 
we hope to unite the advantages of brevity and distinctness. We 
shall see that, as these works appeared successively, though each 
forming, as it were, one stone of the Baconian edifice, there were 
necessarily to be expected many repetitions of ideas previously 
enounced, and many anticipations of future arguments. 

Our synoptical arrangement will be as follows : 
The Instaiuatio. 

I. De Augmentis Scientiarum. 

i. De Praerogativis Instantairum. 

ii. *Adminicula Inductionis. 

iii. *Rectificatio Inductionis. 

iv. *Variatio Inquisitionis pro natura 
TT AT r\ subjecti. 

ii. JMovum Organum. ^ v. *De Praerogativis Naturarum qua- 



o 



tenus ad Inquisit. 
vi. *De Terrainis Inquisitionis. 
vii. *Deductio ad Praxin. 
viii. *De Patacevis ad Inquisitionem. 
ix. *De Scala Axiomalum. 

III. Sylva Syl varum. 

TV. Scala Intellectus. 

Y.. *Prodromi. 

r 

VI. *Philosophia Secunda. 

[The articles marked with an asterisk were never executed.] 

7* 



88 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. IV. 



"VVe will now make a few remarks on the nature and subjects of 
the above works, which together form the whole system of the 
Baconian philosophy. The author, before commencing the construc- 
tion of his edifice, begins by what may be called clearing the ground 
on which it is to stand. The treatise 'De x\ugmentis' is mainly a 
Latin version of an English book ' On the Proficience and Advance- 
ment of Learning,' which had appeared in 1605. It contains the 
outline of the whole system, and points out the defects perceptible 
in the methods previously employed in the investigation of truth. 
It would however be a great mistake to consider the ' De Augmentis'' 
as a mere translation of the treatise just alluded to; it is in many 
respects almost a new work ; not more than two-thirds of the whole 
being translated, while the remaining third contains the result of 
fresh speculations. Much, however, as the 'De Augraentis' is 
superior to its English predecessor. Bacon did not intend it, at least 
in the form under which we have it, to form the first treatise of the 
' Instauratio.' That place was to be occupied by a book, 'De Parti- 
tionibus Scienti^e,^ intended to exhibit the actual state of human 
knowledge when he wrote, and to show its deficiencies. This general 
summary of human science must therefore be considered, though not 
as altogether wanting in the ' Instauratio,' yet as but very imperfectly 
supplied by the treatise 'De Augmentis.'' 

The second part was to discuss, as he himself expresses it, " the 
science of a better and more perfect use of reason in the investiga- 
tion of things, and of the true aids of the understanding;'^ this 
being the new logic, the inductive method, in which what is eminently 
called the Baconian philosophy conists. This is very well expressed 
in the title which the author has given to his work, " Organum" 
signifying literally "instrument," The treatise which we possess 
under the title of ' Novum Organum' is rather a collection of 
materials for the work than the book itself, as Bacon intended it to 
stand second in his list. He calls it ' Partis Secundse Summa, 
' digesta in Aphorismos ;' and it contains the heads or propositions of 
the projected work. It is subdivided into nine distinct portions, of 
which Bacon has given us the titles and the general object, though 
only the fir^t of these subdivisions contains any development of the 
idea. The first of these treated of what in his picturesque language 
he calls " prerogative instances,'^ that is, of what phenomena are to 
be selected for investigation, as most likely 'to conduce, by the specu- 
lations to which they give rise, to the advantage of the human 
species. This singular term " prserogative," is not used in the ordi- 
nary English sense of the same word, but contains an allusion to the 
" prEerogativa centuria'^ of the Roman people, i. e. the first tribes 
whose votes were taken at the elections of the Comitia, and whose 
decision was supposed to influence the suffrages of the rest of the 
citizens. Of these instances fifteen are used to guide the intellect, 



CHAP, n^.] 



THE INSTAURATIO. 



89 



five to assist the senses, and seven to correct the practice. And here 
we may remark a striking instance of Bacon's wonderful mind. In 
all former theories of logic we had been taught to detect and guard 
against certain fallacies or false reasonings, arising from a wrong 
employment of words or a vicious arrangement of the various parts 
of an argument. Bacon goes farther than this, and has tracked, so 
to say, these fallacies to their true origin — not in the abuse or imper- 
fections of language, but to the innate weaknesses of the human 
mind itself. The former dialecticians, like inexperienced physicians, 
contented themselves with applying local or topical remedies to the 
external and merely symptomatic efflorescence of the disease, while 
Bacon, gifted with a larger spirit and a deeper insight into nature, 
attacks the evil in its internal and invisible source, not cleansing the 
surface only, but purifying the blood. He has classed the general 
causes of logical error under four heads, in a passage universally 
quoted for its brilliancy and truth. These errors of reasoning he 
calls idola, a term often rather absurdly rendered in English by the 
word idols,'^ but which would be much more correctly represented 
by the expression "images," or, as Bacon himself phrases it, "false 
appearances" — phantoms of the mind, in short. These are idola 
Tribiis, idola Specus, idola Fori, and idola Theatri ; against all of 
which it behoves us to be upon our guard. By fallacies of the 
Tribe, Bacon indicates the natural weaknesses to which every human 
being is liable ; those of the Den or Cavern are the errors into 
which we are betrayed by peculiar dispositions and circumstances ; 
the fallacies of the Market-place are those false conclusions arising 
from the popular and current use of words which represent things 
otherwise than as they really are ; and the idola of the Theatre, the 
errors proceeding from false systems of philosophy and incorrect 
reasoning. It will be seen, from this as well as from a thousand 
other instances, how high is the ground on which Bacon philoso- 
phises, not merely attempting, as all before him had done, to regulate 
and correct the expression of reason, but aspiring to purify the very 
atmosphere of thought itself. To proceed with our analysis of the 
^ Novum Organum,' the second subdivision treats of the aids to 
induction ; the third, of the correction of induction ; the fourth, of 
varying the investigation according to the nature of the subject ; 
fifthly, of prerogative natures — i. e. what objects shall be first 
inquired into; sixthly, of the boundaries of inquiry; seventhly, on 
the application of inquiry to practice, and what relates to man ; 
eighthly, on the preparations (paraskeuis) for inquuy; and lastly, 
on the ascending and descending scale of axioms. 

The third division of the ' Instauratio' was to contain a complete 
system of Natural History; not however of that science to which 
the name of Natural History is at present confined, but Bacon 
implies in that term an inquiry into the properties of all physical 



90 



OUTLINES OE GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. IV. 



bodies, and a faithful and accurate register of all the phenomena that 
have ever been observed in man's dealing with natural substances. 
In the title given to this part of the work, ' Sylva Syl varum/ Bacon 
probably used the word sylva in the sense which the ancient philoso- 
phers of the Epicurean school attached to it — a sense originating in 
the similar signification assigned to its Grreek radical V^? that is, 
primary matter, capable of being modified by a plastic force. It 
would be absurd to suppose that the outline here sketched in by 
Bacon could be filled up by any single hand, during any single life, 
in any age of mankind. He had previously published as a separate 
work his ' Centuries of Natural History,^ containing about a thousand 
miscellaneous facts and experiments : and he has given a hundred 
and thirty particular histories which ought to be drawn up for this 
great work. A few of these he has given in a sort of skeleton, as 
samples rather of the method of collecting the facts than of the facts 
themselves ; namely, the History of the Winds, of Life and Death, 
of Density and Rarity, of Sound and Hearing. 

The fourth part, called ' Scala Intellectus,' is also wanting, with 
the exception of a few introductory pages. " By these tables,^ says 
Bacon, we mean not such examples as we subjoin to the several 
rules of our method, but types and models, which place before our 
eyes the entire process of the mind in the discovery of truth ; select- 
ing various and remarkable instances.^' 

We now come to the fifth part of the ^Instauratio,^ in which 
Bacon had designed to give a specimen of the new philosophy which 
he hoped to raise after a due use of his natural history and inductive 
method, by way of anticipation or sample of the whole. He calls 
it ' Prodromi sive Anticipationes Philosophise Secundae / and though 
the work does not exist as he projected it, we possess various frag- 
ments of this part under the titles of ' Cogitationes de Natura 
Rerum,' ' Cogitata et Yisa,^ 'Filum Labyrinthi,' and a few more; 
being probably all that he had reduced to writing. The last portion 
of Bacon's colossal plan was to be a perfect system of philosophy, 
deduced by a legitimate, sober, and exact inquiry according to the 
method whose principles he had established. This consummation, 
however, of his new system Bacon well knew was beyond his own 
mighty powers to execute ; indeed he expresses his conviction that it 
was altogether beyond the sphere of human thought. «' To perfect 
this last part is above our powers and beyond our hopes. We may, 
as we trust, make no despicable beginnings; the destinies of the 
human race must complete it — in such a manner perhaps, as men, 
looking only at the present, would not readily conceive. For upon 
this will depend, not only a speculative good, but all the fortunes of 
mankind, and all their power.^' " And with an eloquent prayer," 
continues Hallam, from whose excellent view of the Baconian philo- 
sophy the foregoing remarks are condensed — " with an eloquent 



CHAP. IV.] 



bacon's style. 



91 



prayer that his exertions may be rendered effectual to the attainment 
of truth and happiness, the introductory chapter of the ^ lustauratio/ 
which announces the distribution of its portions, concludes. Such 
was the temple, of which Bacon saw in vision before him the stately 
front and decorated pediments, in all their breadth of light and har- 
mony of proportion, while long vistas of receding columns and 
glimpses of internal splendour revealed a glory that it was not 
permitted to him to comprehend.^' 

As the reader will easily conclude from the titles of the various 
parts of the 'Instauratio,^ the work was (with the few exceptions 
specified above) published in Latin ; the original conceptions of its 
immortal author having been translated, under his immediate inspec- 
tion, by Herbert, Hobbes, and other persons, "masters of the Roman 
eloquence.'' The Latin style in which it is written is admirably 
adapted to the subject, and a worthy vehicle for such majestic con- 
ceptions; it is in a high degree concise, vigorous, and accurate, 
though by no means free from obscurity, and of course in no way to 
be considered as a model of pure Latinity. In reading Bacon, 
either in his vernacular or more learned dress, we feel perpetually 
conscious of a peculiarity, inevitably accompanying the highest 
genius in its manifestations: — we mean that in him the language 
seems always the flexible and obedient instrument of thought ; not, 
as it is in the productions of a lower order of mind, its rebellious 
and recalcitrant slave. All authors below the greatest seem to use 
the mighty gift of expression with a certain secret timidity, lest the 
lever should prove too ponderous for the hand that essays to wield 
it : or, rather, they resemble the rash student in the old legend, who 
was overmastered by the demons which he had unguardedly evoked. 
There is, perhaps, no author so metaphorical as Bacon; his whole 
style is saturated with metaphor ; the very titles of his books are 
frequently nothing else but metaphors of the boldest character ; and 
yet there is not one of these figures of speech by which we do not 
gain a more vivid, clear, and rapid conception of the idea which he 
desires to convey. With him such expressions, however beautiful, 
are never merely ornamental : like some of the most exquisite deco- 
rations of G-recian and of Gothic architecture, what appears intro- 
duced into the design for the mere purpose of adornment will ever 
be found, when closely examined, to give strength and stability to 
the structure, of which it seems to inexperienced eyes a mere un- 
essential and unnecessary adjunct. 

It would be superfluous here to devote more than a passing notice 
to one objection which has been brought against the originality of 
the Baconian system of philosophy, and against the importance of 
•the reformation which it produced in human science. The methods 
recommended by Bacon, Siiy the objectors, have always been more or 
less in use from the very infancy of human knowledge. The art of 



92 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. IV. 



induction, and of advancing from particular to general cases in the 
investigation of the laws of nature, was certainly employed and re- 
peatedly insisted on long before the Yerulamiam method was in 
existence. We have in another place strongly insisted on the 
absurdity of considering Bacon as an inventor in the proper sense of 
the word : what he did was not to teach us a philosophy, but to 
show us how to philosophise ; and the immeasurable importance of 
what he did will best be appreciated by a simple comparison of the 
progress made in real knowledge during the twenty-two centuries 
which have elapsed since the time of Aristotle, and the acquisitions 
made in the two hundred and nineteen years since the death of 
Bacon. 

It is quite true that Bacon, as he was not a discoverer in the art 
of investigating truth in general, so neither did he make any specific 
discoveries in any particular department of science. He was not a 
mathematician, nor an astronomer, nor a naturalist, nor a meta- 
physician; and in this respect we might be disposed to echo the 
ironical criticism of his contemporary Harvey, who, competent 
enough himself to perceive Bacon's deficiency in the practical and 
technical parts of natural science, complained that the author of 
the ^ Instauratio ' "wrote philosophy like a Lord Chancellor." No ! 
the true obligation which the human race must ever feel, to the 
latest generations, to Bacon is that he did what no man else perhaps 
was ever suflSciently gifted to do ; that, seated as it were on the pin- 
nacle of his sublime genius, he saw distinctly, and mapped out accu- 
rately, all that can ever be an object of human investigation; that 
his far-darting and all-embracing intellectual vision took in at once 
the whole expanse of the domains of philosophy ; nay, that it pene- 
trated into the obscurity which brooded over the distant and unex- 
plored regions of the vast country of the mind, and traced, with 
prophetic sagacity, the paths that must be followed by future dis- 
coverers, in ages yet unborn. 

With his own notions on physical subjects, there were mingled 
many of the prejudices and erroneous ideas prevalent in his day ; 
but such is the essential and invariable justness of the rules which 
he has laid down for the conduct of investigation, that these false 
conclusions may be swept away, and replaced by facts more accu- 
rately observed, without any weakening of the system which he 
originated. To apply the admirable comparison of Cowley, Bacon, 
though himself not free from the errors of his time, yet clearly 
foresaw the gradual disappearance of those errors : — 

" Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last : 
The barren wilderness he pass'd 
Did on the very border stand 
Of the bless'd promis'd land. 
And from tlie Pisgah-height of his exalted wit 
Saw it himself and show'd us it." 



CHAP. IV.] bacon's intellectual character. 



93 



At the same time, gifted as he was with "the vision and the 
faculty divine," by which he could thus anticipate centuries, and 
behold " not as through a glass darkly, but face to face," sciences 
which had no existence when he wrote, nothing is more admirable 
than the common sense which distinguished Bacon's divine intelli- 
gence. The ruling and vital principle, the very life-blood of the 
new philosophy, is the indispensable necessity of accurate and com- 
plete observation of nature, anterior and preliminary to any attempt 
at theorizing and drawing conclusions. Yet, though he was the 
apostle of experiment, he has no less foreseen and warned us against 
the ill effects that would follow the rash generalization founded upon 
particular and imperfect observation — effects which have been very 
perceptible in modern science, and which have tended to give to the 
knowledge of later days an air of superficiality little less dangerous 
than the more visionary and sophistical tone which characterizes the 
ancient systems. 

But above all, what strikes us as the most admirable peculiarity 
of Bacon's philosophy is the spirit of utilifij which runs through and 
modifies the whole design. We do not mean utility in the low and 
limited sense of a care for the development of man's merely physical 
comforts and advantages; the exercise and cultivation of the highest 
faculties of our being, the enlarging of our sphere of intellectual 
pleasures, the strengthening of our moral obligations, the refining 
and elevating of our perception of the beautiful — all these Bacon 
has treated, and would have exhausted, had they not been as infinite 
as the soul itself. On many of these subjects ^ — -on the heau ideal, 
for example — it will be hardly too much to say that he has left 
nothing for future speculators. 

Another peculiarity which we cannot forbear noticing, as forming 
one of the striking features of Bacon's intellectual character, is the 
circumstance that his writings will not be found in any high degree 
apophthegmatic : that is, the reader will not be likely to meet with 
many of those short, extractable, and easily remembered sentences, 
or gnomai, which pass from mouth to mouth as weighty maxims, or 
separate masses of truth — the gold coins, if we may so style them, 
of the intellectual exchange. Many such are undoubtedly to be 
found in his pages, but they are certainly less plentiful in Bacon than 
in other great writers ; but we shall generally find these passages so 
embedded and fixed in the argument of which such propositions form 
a part, as not to be extracted without manifest loss to their value and 
significancy. In consequence of this. Bacon is one of those authors 
who must be read through to be correctly judged and worthily 
appreciated. Nor will any aspiring and truly generous mind begrudge 
the labour which will attend this exercise of the highest faculties 
with which God has endowed it ; it is surely no mean privilege to 
be thus admitted into the laboratory and workshop of the new philo- 



94 



OUTLINES OE GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. IV. 



sophy, and to behold — no indifferent spectator — the sublime alchemy 
by which experience is transmuted into truth. 

Among the minor works of the illustrious Chancellor it may not 
be improper to mention two or three of the principal. We shall 
specify, first, a very curious treatise ^ On the Wisdom of the An- 
cients,' being an attempt to explain the classical mythology, by a 
system of moral and political interpretation, much less founded on 
probability than calculated to elevate, in our eyes, the degree of 
knowledge possessed by the pagan world. The following is the judg- 
ment, respecting this work, attributed to Balzac, from one of whose 
letters it is supposed to be a quotation : " Croyons done, pour I'amour 
du Chancelier Bacon, que toutes les folies des anciens sont sages, et 
tons leurs songes mysteres; et de celles-la qui sont estiraees pures 
fables, il n'y en a pas une, quelque bizarre et extravagante qu'elle 
soit, qui n'ait son fondement dans Thistoire, si Ton en veut croire 
Bacon, et qui n'ait ete deguisee de la sorte par les sages du vieux 
temps, pour la rendre plus utile aux peuples." Another work is 
entitled the ' Felicities of the Eeign of Queen Elizabeth ; ' and a 
third is a production of greater importance, a ' History of King 
Henry VII.,' written probably in a courtly desire to gratify King- 
James, who was, as everybody knows, ambitious of the reputation 
of the pacific glories of a wise and tranquil administrator, and whose 
character in this respect would find a flattering parallel in the unwar- 
like reign of the politic Henry. Besides these, he is the author of a 
philosophical fiction entitled ' The New Atlantis.' 

The glory of Bacon, as he himself had predicted, rose gradually 
but steadily on the literary horizon of Europe. It may however be 
complained (and this is not a circumstance to be wondered at) that 
his works were often rather vaguely eulogized than accurately studied ; 
the profound nature of their subject, and the vastness of their design, 
were likely to have much limited the number of their readers ; and 
in consequence many erroneous opinions became prevalent, not only 
respecting the true value of the Baconian revolution in science, but 
even respecting the nature of the system itself. It is unnecessary to 
say, that what the great philosopher gained in this way from vague 
and unintelligent praise he lost in true glory, which can only be 
founded on justice. It was reserved for various illustrious metaphy- 
sicians of the Scottish school "to turn," in Hallam's words, ^' that 
which had been a blind veneration into a rational worship.'' These 
profound and elegant writers, Reid, Stewart, Bobison, and Playfair, 
by clothing the philosophy of Bacon in the language of the nine- 
teenth century, have deprived it of whatever repulsive and difficult 
features it may have retained from its being written in a dead 
language, and from its somewhat complicated arrangement and sub- 
divisions; while some of the greatest among modern experimental 
philosophers have been proud to draw, from practical observations 



CHAP, v.] ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 



95 



and more recent improvements of astronomy and other branches of 
physics, new illustrations of the justness of Bacon's predictions, new 
conclusions clearing up obscure passages, and new proofs of the truth 
of his system. It is delightful to see experiment thus the willing 
handmaid of theory, and Herschel paying practical worship at the 
shrine of Bacon. 



CHAPTER Y. 

ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 

Comparison between the Greek and Medissval Dramas — Similarity of their 
Origin — Illusion in the Drama — Mysteries or Miracle-Plays — Their Subject 
and Construction — Moralities — The Vice — Interludes — The Four P.'s — 
First Regular Dramas — Comedies — Tragedies — Early English Theatres — 
Scenery — Costume — State of the Dramatic Profession.^ 

There are very few sssthetic subjects upon which more contro- 
versy has been raised than upon the respective merits of various 
schools of the Drama : and certainly there are not many which have 
excited more critical asperity than the long-vexed question as to the 
comparative merits of the two great dramatic schools, to which 
Schlegel has assigned the not inapposite titles of Classical and Ro- 
mantic. But both parties seem to have forgotten the similar origin 
and history of the two schools which they represent as so different, 
nay, even as so opposed ; and to have pretty generally overlooked the 
important fact that the peculiarities of structure which respectively 
characterise the two classes of productions, so falsely considered as 
antagonistic, are really not essential or inherent, but arise from 
merely technical or superficial circumstances. Thus, for example, 
the Grreek tragic drama was originally a religious ceremony, and, 
however modified, never entirely lost that sacred character.) The per- 
sonages of the Attic stage were almost always to a certain degree 
mythic : that is, they were almost invariably heroic ; invested, either 
by antiquity, by the greatness of their exploits, or their immediate 
relations with the deities, with something of a religious character ; 
and it is easily conceivable that, with such a people as the Greeks, 
the boundary-line between the god and the hero was not very dis- 
tinctly traced : Theseus, for instance, was very little less a god than 
Hermes, and Apollo very little more divine than Orestes; there were 
indeed many characters, frequently produced on the Athenian stage, 
who, like Hercules, obviously partook of the two qualities. Thus 
the Attic tragedy always retained a good deal of the historico-mythic 
8 



96 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. V. 



character — a character whicli pervaded even the technical details of 
its construction, performance, and mise en scene. 

Indiscriminate admiration, however, has discovered beauties in 
merely accidental and unimportant peculiarities, and has attempted 
to derive from the necessary laws of art rules which were founded 
upon circumstance or convenience. Thus, because the Grreek theatres 
were of colossal dimensions, and consequently uncovered, enthusiastic 
critics have discovered beauty and grandeur in the contrivances em- 
ployed to exaggerate the size of the actor and increase the sound of 
his voice : — because their construction, and also the imperfection of 
the arts of mechanism, together also perhaps with some prejudices 
connected with the gravity and even sacredness of these spectacles, 
precluded them from changing the scene, attempts have been made 
to prove that the fixed scene — or unity of place — is an essential law 
of the dramatic art, and that consequently the modern plays are 
necessarily and demonstrably barbarous. It is exceedingly curious 
to observe with what ingenuity the so-called classical critics have de- 
fended the adherence to the Three Unities in dramatic composition. 
Their reasoning has all along been founded upon the supposition, 
that in the dramatic art the source of pleasure is to be found in illu- 
sion, and that consequently the preservation of the unities is neces- 
sary. Now, we will not maintain in this place the very false and 
low view of the true nature and object of art involved in this sup- 
position ; we will not show its fallacy when applied to painting, to 
music, to sculpture, or show that illusion — or rather delusion, a 
cheating of the senses — is never at all contemplated in works of any 
degree of excellence ; we will not repeat the obvious fact that illusion, 
properly so called, never was and never can be attained, or even ap- 
proximatively reached, in any dramatic work whatever, and that, 
even could it be attained, the result would be precisely subversive of 
the only conceivable end of the drama, viz. the production of pleasure. 
We will go at once to the point, and say that this principle of illusion, 
as an object to be attained by the dramatist, was never at all recog- 
nised by the Greeks themselves. It is true that the Apollo or the 
Venus might be rendered by a coating of rose-pink much more like 
a man and a woman ; but the object of the sculptor was to elevate 
and gratify our imagination, and not to cheat our eye. Had the 
latter been the aim of sculpture, a wax doll would be a finer produc- 
tion than the noblest marble that ever breathed under the chisel of 
Phidias. 

We have only to read a Grreek play to see that nothing can be less 
artificial as a contrivance for producing mere illusion. The formality 
and regularity of the language, the simple and straightforward 
character of the dialogue, the lyric portion or chorus, written in a 
difierent dialect and more splendid imagery than the rest of the 
work, the total neglect of probability and even possibility in the 



CHAP, v.] 



THE GREEK DRAMA. 



97 



arrangement of the events, time and space perpetually annihilated, 
and every conceivable rule of human conduct and prudence inces- 
santly violated — all these things sufficiently prove to us that the 
great Grreek dramatists never so much as contemplated the possibility 
of producing what we call illusion. 

No man, we flatter ourselves, ever admired more fervently than 
we do the admirable genius and exquisite taste which characterise 
the G-reek tragedies : their dignity, their pathos, the wonderful depth 
and acuteness of the remarks with which they are crowded, the daz- 
zling splendour of the lyric portions so nobly contrasted with the 
pure marble-like severity of the dialogue, the rich descriptions (put 
into the mouth of the messenger in most of them) of the terrible 
catastrophe with which they conclude, and which the G-reeks did not 
permit to take place on the stage, from a scruple founded, we are 
persuaded, not on a principle of taste, but of religion — these are 
merits which we can allow with enthusiastic readiness ; but they are 
merits very distinct from that principle of illusion which has been 
considered as having guided the mighty art of JEschylus, of Sopho- 
cles, and of Euripides. 

If we examine into the early history of that Romantic Drama 
which has become universal over the whole of modern Europe, and 
which has in our own century finally expelled the so-called Classicism 
from its last entrenchments on the stage of France, we shall see how 
singularly its origin and first development resembled the rise of the 
Grecian Tragedy. Both species of composition were at first purely 
religious ; both were performed on solemn occasions in temples; both 
were distinguished for the simplicity of their structure, and for a total 
neglect of the much-vaunted principle of illusion ; both were accom- 
panied by a certain proportion of lyric declamation, executed by a 
number of persons who occupied a middle or intermediate position 
between the principal dramatic characters on the stage (the protago- 
nists) and the audience who witnessed the solemn show. 

The food, the pabulum, of the dramatic art was in the two cases 
as different as were the religion, the manners, the modes of thought 
and action at the two periods which we have thus contrasted. The 
Greek dramatist drew his materials from the rich storehouse of pagan 
mythology, the black annals of his ancient kings, and the legends of 
bis national heroes : in these he found ample materials for his 
scenes; and the whole was bound together by one pervading princi- 
ple, in the highest degree moving and sublime — the over-ruling and 
incessant action of the dramatic fate. These grand and awful 
events were familiar to the audience from their infancy; they 
were calculated to gratify to the highest degree the national vanity 
and patriotic enthusiasm : every Athenian felt himself the country- 
man, many the descendants, of Theseus or of QSdipus ; and when 
we reflect upon the intensity of the patriotism which characterised 

i 
I 



98 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. V. 



the citizens of the little republics of Greece, together with the 
delicate sense of the beautiful which seemed peculiarly innate in 
the Hellenic character, we shall find that their dramatists were as 
amply provided with materials for their art as with rewards for its 
triumphant exercise. 

In the Middle Ages the external manifestations of the art were 
all changed, but the art itself remained the same. The rude popula- 
tions of chivalric Europe, the serfs of England, France, and Germany, 
could have felt but very imperfectly any sentiments addressed to 
their patriotism. Ignorant, barbarous, and oppressed, how could men 
love their country, who could not call their wives and children their 
own? How could men, reduced to a mere brutish state of animal 
obedience, feel their hearts swell within them at the mimic represen- 
tation of great exploits ? As to the mere abstract perception of the 
beautiful, such a feeling could not exist in their minds. What 
strings were left in the human heart undeadened and capable of 
responding to the touch of genius ? We answer, the sense of wonder. 
Catholicism, with all its miracles, its legends, its enthusiasm, had 
supplanted the paganism of classical antiquity. We are not inclined 
to consider the credulity of the ancients, at least at the period when 
the Greek drama reached its highest pitch of splendour, as very 
deeply seated, or likely to modify very profoundly the character of 
the Athenian people. Their credulity was rather of the imagination ; 
that of the Middle Ages was of the heart. What a difference 
between the airy grace and sensuous allegory of the pagan mythology, 
where belief was merely a matter of assent, involving no practical 
change of conduct, and offering no promises, or very faint ones, of a 
future existence, with that deep, all-pervading, and solemn religion 
which ofi'ered to the oppressed serf of the Middle Ages his only 
consolation in this life, together with his mighty hope and onlooking 
to the next ! The very superstitions, too, of the time, the huge 
mass of striking and yet fantastic imagery which composed a world 
of legend, exhibit an example of the fact that in depriving the 
human mind of some of its senses (as takes place in those of the 
body) we only add intensity and power to those we leave behind. 

The religious dramas of the Middle Ages were nothing but an 
embodiment of Christianity as it appeared to the simple imagination 
of those rude times. They were often little else but the narration 
of some biblical or legendary miracle, rudely dramatised, and often in 
the language of Scripture. They are supposed to have originated in 
the recitals of pilgrims, returning from their long wanderings in 
distant and unknown lands with an abundant stock of wonders, peril- 
ous adventures and hair-breadth ^scapes, gorgeous descriptions of the 
magnificence of the East, enthralling tales of persecution and wild 
idolatries. With these the ''palmer graye" would collect a crowd 
about him, and keep his simple heai-ers listening with unwearied 



CHAP. Y.] THE MEDI^YAL DRAMA: MYSTERIES. 



99 



wonder hour after hour; just as the professed tale-teller of the East 
enchants his grave and bearded audience in the coffee-houses of 
Damascus, or the ragged improvvisatore of Naples enchains his circle 
of boatmen and lazzaroni. That such tales should have by degrees 
taken a dramatic form is not surprising ; still less so that the Church 
should have very soon perceived the efficacy of such representations, 
not only as instruments of instruction for the people, but also as a 
means for extending the authority of the priesthood, and increasing 
the revenues of the ecclesiastical institutions. The people were 
unable to read, and their ideas respecting the Scriptural history were 
exceedingly imperfect ; and the priests of the Middle Ages were far 
too well acquainted with the human heart not to know the truth of 
the Horatian precept — 



" begnius irritant animum demissa per aures, /) ^ 

Quam quae sunt oculis submissa fideUbus." f^'^j .OC^'^^^'^^ 

The Church therefore encouraged, as far as possible, the stron'g'iasfe 
early developed for the religious dramas, viewing them as at once a ' ' 
powerful medium of religious instruction, and as an inexhaustible 
source of profit and influence ; and we find them used as a very 
important mechanism for raising the immense sums destined to the 
support of the crusades. At first they were of a purely religious , ; 
character; the subjects were always either events of the biblical 
history itself, or else extracts from the legends of the saints. The 
representation of these dramas was very early taken, by the profound 
policy of the hierarchy, out of the hands of the laity; and the per- 
formance was carried on in the church itself, the actors being priests, 
and the splendour of the spectacle augmented by the use of the rich 
vestments and ornaments of the clergy. 

Here we may clearly see the singular resemblance existing between 
the Greek tragedy and the religious plays of the Middle Ages. 
Both were performed in a sacred spot; the subjects of both were 
drawn from what was considered, at the respective periods, to be most 
holy and venerable ; both were placed before the spectator with the 
greatest magnificence attainable ; and the spirit of mingled patriotism 
and religion, which it was the object of the G-reek theatre to excite, 
was certainly little inferior in intensity to the credulous and simple 
awe with which the rude audiences of Catholic times must have 
witnessed the great mysteries of their religion represented before the 
altar of a cathedral. In fact, we cannot but remark that the very 
name of this species of spectacle is strongly corroborative of the 
truth of our parallel; they were called mysteries" and miracles." 
Even the division of the stage recalls something of the rigour and 
complexity of the Greek scene : it was divided into three platforms ; 
the upper being reserved for the appearance of God, angels, and 
glorified spirits ; the next below it, to the human personages of the 



100 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. V. 



drama; and the lowest, devoted to the devils, being a representation 
of the yawfiing mouth of hell — the " alta ostia Ditis" — a black and 
gloomy cavern, vomiting flames and sulphureous smoke, through 
which incessantly ascended the howling of the damned, and by which 
the evil spirits made their exits and their entrances, rising to tempt 
and torture humanity, or plunging back with the bodies of their 
victims. In all these peculiarities it is impossible not to be struck 
with the resemblance between the drama of the Middle Ages and 
that of classical antiquity. Nor can we fail to remark the innumer- 
able traces left by the religious dramas upon the art of this period. 
The much-agitated question of the meaning of the singular title 
given by Dante to his great work could hardly have been raised had 
the critics remembered that the commedia of the ''gran padre Ali- 
ghier" is nothing else but a mystery in a narrative form ; and that 
the three divisions of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise correspond 
exactly with the three stages of the religious dramas. 

The subjects of these dramas were generally taken from the most 
striking and pathetic passages of the Bible history : the Creation, 
the Deluge, the Fall of Man, the Sacrifice of Abraham, the Mas- 
sacre of the Innocents, the Crucifixion ; no subject appears to have 
been too solemn or too vast for the attempt of this bold but barba- 
rous art. They never shrank from introducing upon the stage the 
most sublime personages; the Deity himself, the Saviour, the 
patriarchs, all figure in these singular dramas. They seem not to 
have felt that species of awe which would now prevent an author 
from presenting, in a visible form, such impersonations — an attempt 
which not even the genius of Groethe could succeed in rendering 
successful. At such early periods, when the critical faculty had not 
yet dried up in man the springs of wonder and belief, there could 
have been neither real nor imaginary disrespect in this freedom. 
They followed as closely as they could the march, and even the lan- 
guage, of the Scriptural narration, and would probably have felt it 
as derogatory to the dignity of their subject to omit any detail of the 
Bible history, as we should find it dangerous, or even reprehensible, 
to follow those details with too great a fidelity. 

These compositions were for the most part written, as might be 
expected, in the popular metre of the various countries which pro- 
duced them ; for it must not be forgotten that such representations 
were the favourite amusement of mankind in all the countries of 
Europe during a very long period. Germany, France, Italy, Por- 
tugal, and Spain — in short, there is not any country which does not 
possess a large collection of these singular productions. 

They were sometimes of inordinate length, and in many cases 
lasted even several days : there is one in existence, on the subject 
of the Creation, which occupied in the performance a period as long 
as the event which it represented^ and consequently the spectators 



CHAP, v.] THE MEDI.5:YAL DUAMA : MYSTERIES. 



101 



of this mystery gratified their wonder during a period of six succes- 
sive days. We may inquire how the authors of these productions 
could have succeeded in introducing any thing ludicrous and comic 
into dramas whose principal action was so solemn and supernatural. 
Ludicrous scenes, however, they were obliged to have ; for the 
people were in far too rude a state to be able to sit listening for so 
long a time to purely religious and moral declamation. To attain 
this end they hit upon the happy expedient of making the Devil the 
never-failing comic character in those cases where the nature of the 
subject precluded the possibility of introducing a mere human 
buffoon. The devil was the butt and clown of the performance, 
and, being generally represented in a light at once terrific and con- 
temptible, this circumstance has probably originated the very curious 
part played in the popular legends by the Father of Evil. The 
malignant spirits, in all systems of mythology and popular belief, 
with the single exception of Christianity, are presented in colours 
darkly and tremendously sublime, and certainly their agency is 
never represented as accompanied by circumstances in any way mean 
or ridiculous. Christianity, however, the vital principle of which is 
the victory of truth over the powers of evil, has originated the popu- 
lar character of a malicious and ugly fiend, whose machinations are 
defeated by a very moderate degree of ingenuity and address. How 
far the obscurer superstitions of paganism which still remained in 
the popular imagination may have conduced to this curious anomaly, 
it is not at present our object to inquire : it is not improbable that 
it arose in some measure from an ancient belief, propagated by many 
of the Christian fathers, that the deities of the various pagan my- 
thologies were in reality evil spirits allowed for a time to mislead and 
delude the human race ; and also the fii'st propagators of Christian- 
ity, finding the notions of polytheism so deeply and ineradicably 
implanted in the mind of man, contented themselves with represent- 
ing as malignant the nature of those beings whose existence they 
could not disprove, and were probably themselves very little inclined 
to deny. The devil, therefore, of popular belief — not the haughty 
and beautiful creation of Milton, but the hideous demon, the 
"lubber fiend," of Ariosto, with his horns and hoofs and tail — was 
the comic character of the mysteries ; to which, wherever possible, 
they added other buffoons of a like ludicrous colour, generally se- 
lected among the wicked human personages of the drama. Thus, 
in the miracle-play of the 'Massacre of the Innocents,' the satellites 
of Herod — his knights as they are called with a laughable ana- 
chronism, and who are represented as swearing by "Mahound," or 
Mahomet — are exposed to the alternate laughter and detestation of 
the audience. Nor did these old authors neglect those broad and 
general subjects of satire presented by human weaknesses, and which 
are found in the writings of all periods. The quarrels of matrimon}', 



102 



OUTLINES 01^ GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. V. 



and the miseries undergone by henpecked husbands, as they are 
subjects of all ages, and "come home to the business and bosoms of 
men/' have excited the laughter of mankind in every epoch: un- 
doubtedly there were scolding wives before the flood, but it is curious 
to see a virago forming one of the "dramatis personae'^ in a miracle- 
play on the subject of the Deluge, In the very singular drama to 
which we have just alluded, "Noe's Wif " is a character of a purely 
comic nature, and is represented, in a scene by no means devoid of 
coarse drollery, as refusing to enter the • ark unless she is allowed to 
bring with her "her gossips every one," whom she swears (hy St. 
John !) that she loves with great affection. In a Glerman mystery, 
which we believe has been printed, Cain and Abel are introduced as 
examined by the Almighty, in the presence of Adam, as to their 
proficiency in the "Lord's Prayer.'^ Abel is prompted by our 
Saviour, and gets through his task pretty respectably; but Cain, who 
is secretly instigated by the devil standing behind him to say the 
prayer backwards, is very properly and condignly flogged, having 
previously received divers cuffs from his father for refusing to take 
his hat off ! We see, therefore, that the humour of these pieces, 
however natural and enjoue, was of no very refined character; the 
pathetic passages, it is fair to add, sometimes reach a high degree of 
excellence. In an English mystery on the subject of Abraham's 
sacrifice, the scene between the father and the son is exceedingly 
tender and beautiful, and the speech of Isaac, in particular, of very 
great merit. In short, these works show that the heart of man, 
however imperfect be his civilization, has always some chords which 
vibrate responsive to the touch of nature. 

We have hitherto been speaking of the mystery or miracle-play 
in its pure and original form, as a representation exclusively religious 
in its subject and in the mode and place of its performance. It will 
now be our business to trace, as rapidly as possible, the changes by 
which it was gradually transformed into the romantic drama of mo- 
dern times. It may easily be conceived that so favourite and so pro- 
fitable a species of entertainment as the stage could not long be 
monopolised by the Church. In the mind of man there has ever 
been an inherent taste for dramatic impersonations; there is no age 
so rude, no country so barbarous, as not to possess some amusement 
of a dramatic nature ; indeed, it may be said that the very rudeness 
of an age is itself a measure of what may be called its dramatic sen- 
sibilit^y. Children, as we see, are perpetually acting; and the child- 
hood of nations is like that of individuals ; at that period the imagi- 
nation is in the highest degree excitable, while at the same time the 
judgment and the comparing faculty are not yet developed. 

The mysteries then, from being a purely religious exhibition, gra- 
dually degenerated into the moralities, a species of entertainment 
which is one step farther towards the embodiment of imaginary per- 



CHAP. Y.] THE MEDIEVAL DRAMA: MORALITIES. 



103 



sonages. In these pieces the historical or theological characters of 
the Scripture were supplanted by personifications of abstract qualities 
— the virtues, the vices, the sentiments of human nature. In the 
morality, instead of Moses, of Adam, of the Holy Spirit, we have 
Justice, Mercy, Temperance, Folly, Grluttony, and Vice. In fact, 
this last character, whose language and costume were ludicrous, enters 
^ into the composition of every morality as the clown or buffoon. We 
are not, however, to suppose that the devil was dismissed : in spite 
of ^he less religious character of the morality as compared with the 
mystery, Satan was far too droll a personage to be thus cashiered — 
he is retained • and the greater part of the comic scenes consist of 
dialogues between the Devil and the Vice, the latter of whom is 
generally represented as baffling and beating his infernal antagonist, 
who, however, sometimes enjoys his revenge, and carries off the Vice 
at the end of the piece. It should be remembered that the Vice 
was habited in the motley, and wore the coxcomb, of the jester of 
this period, and armed with the wooden sword which figures on the 
stage even down to the present day as the wand of Harlequin. 

Indeed, Harlequin himself, and that other pleasant Italian, Pulci- 
nella — the universal type, under some name or other, of popular 
drollery and satire — are supposed by the learned to trace their pedi- 
gree to the moralities of the Middle Ages : so few in number are the 
forms under which the human mind embodies its creations. The 
old Italian comedy, the ancient Spanish comedy, in fact all the dra- 
matic types of modern Europe, bear indisputable traces of a very 
high antiquity indeed ; nay, some antiquaries have even gone so far 
as to see in Arlecchino, in Pulcinella, in the clown of the English 
stage, and in the Grracioso of the Spanish, the principal characters 
of the Atellan farces, which the Romans laughed at so heartily, and, 
not stoppij;ig even here, have considered this pleasant family of drolls 
as representing various personages in the celebration of the mysteries 
of Eleusis, and the yet remoter worship of the Cabiri ! 

The subjects of the moralities were, as the name implies, of an 
ethical nature, intended to inculcate principles of virtue; and how- 
ever imperfect, as a means of exciting sympathy and interest in the 
spectator, were the cold impersonations of abstract ideas which com- 
posed their " dramatis personte,'^ these works are by no means defi- 
^ cient either in ingenuity of plot, or in the occasionally skilful deline- 
ation of character. They were generally performed eitlier by students 
at the universities, or by the great municipal bodies in towns, to 
celebrate some solemn festival, or to do honour to some exalted per- 
sonage. In the former case they were often in Latin; and in the 
latter — that is, when produced by the members of the trades, mcstiers, 
or craft-corporations of the cities — they were either acted on a tem- 
porary stage erected in the open air, or on a moving platform on 
wheels ; thus forming part of those splendid processions of which we 
read so much. 



104 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. V. 



AraoDg the more remarkable of tliese compositions whicli have 
come down in the English language to our times, ifc will be necessary 
merely to cite the titles of two or three ; as the name of the piece 
will give us in general a pretty good idea of its subject and contents. 
' Lusty Juventus/ in which the hero, a personification of the abstract 
idea of youth, is seduced by the various passions and vices, and pro- 
tected by the opposing virtues. Other examples will be found in 
^ Impatient Poverty/ ' Hit the Nail on the Head/ ^ The Hog hath 
lost his Pearl/ &c. &c. These moralities imperceptibly merged into 
another species of drama, less ambitious in its construction, less re- 
gular in its plot, and admitting a good deal more drollery and humour. 
These were the interludes, which formed a favourite entertainment in 
the days of Henry YIII., and which were much shorter and of a 
much merrier character than the solemn and scholastic morality. 
Of these a noted and most prolific author was John Heywood, a 
sort of jester at the court of the king just mentioned, and whose wild 
farces exhibit extraordinary powers of humour and even wit. Hey- 
wood was an enthusiastic Catholic, and his rude dramas bear innu- 
merable marks of that great war of polemics and ridicule which 
preceded the Keformation. In times of religious dissension, every 
province of literature, even the least fitted to be made the scene of 
religious warfare, is invaded by the contests of theology ; and a com- 
plete collection might be made of moralities and interludes of this 
time, written to maintain the opinions of the Catholics on one side, 
and of the Reformers on the other, in which plentiful volleys of ridi- 
cule and abuse are directed by the author against the partisans of the 
opposite Church. As the name implies, the interlude is properly a 
short dramatic scene, intended to be performed in the intervals of 
some greater ceremony or festival. It was originally represented in 
the pauses unavoidably occurring during the representation of the 
solemn morality, or, as a kind of entr'acte, in the vacant intervals 
which frequently took place in the long festivities of the Middle 
Ages. It is thus that at the present day dramatic representations 
are introduced in China to enliven the guests between the courses of 
their interminable banquets; and the interlude, we know, was fre- 
quently performed in the great halls of our ancestors on festival 
occasions. These representations were almost always of a broadly 
comic character, and were frequently, like the satiric dramas of the 
Attic stage, a species of parody or burlesque upon the graver action \ 
of the piece in the intervals of which they were performed. One 
of the drollest of these dramatic caricatures is entitled ' The Four 
P's it is in a rude kind of jingling, doggrel verse, and represents 
a species of match made by its four interlocutors — the four P's, from 
whence it takes its title — a pedler, a pilgrim, a ^poticary, and a par- 
doner — as to who can tell the greatest lie : after a good deal of as- 
tonishing mendacity, the pardoner asserts, as if accidentally, that he 



CHAP, v.] 



FIRST REGULAR DRAMAS. 



105 



never saw a woman out of temper; and this being unanimously agreed 
to be the greatest lie ever heard; the prize is awarded to the assertor 
of so tremendous a falsehood. 

It is obvious that the dramatic art was now upon the very verge 
of the regular Comedy and Tragedy; and the process of gradual 
improvement can be traced no farther from the allegorical personages 
of the morality to the creation of specific human characters and the 
representing of actual human life. We have now reached the period 
of the first regular comedies, properly so called ; the excellence of 
which, it is but proper to remark, was such as to give noble earnest 
of the splendid triumphs in this way of writing which the English 
literature was destined afterwards to achieve. Probably in the reign 
of Henry YIII., but certainly not later than 1551, Nicholas Udall 
produced his ^ Ralph Royster Doyster,' the first comedy in the lan- 
guage, in which the ingenuity of the plot, the nature of the charac- 
ters, and the ease of the dialogue are all carried to a high degree of 
perfection. The dramatis personse are all taken from middle life, 
and the play gives us a most admirable picture of the manners of 
the citizens of London at this period. It is written in a very loose 
and conversational species of rhymed couplet, and was probably 
performed by the scholars of Westminster, of which school the 
author was master. About ten years afterwards we meet with ano- 
ther comedy, long supposed to have been the earliest in the language : 
this is ^G-ammer Gurton's Needle,' and is a rich piece of rustic 
drollery, the plot turning upon the loss of a needle with which 
Gammer (commere ?) Gurton was mending the breeches of her man 
Hodge, and which loss is attributed by a beggar — the clever and 
rascally intrigant of the piece — to the dishonesty of a neighbour, 
between whom and Mistress Gurton there occurs a most admirable 
scolding scene. After a considerable period of consternation, mis- 
understanding, and quarrelling in all quarters (for we must think 
that a needle at this period, and in a remote village, was a serious 
loss), and after we have been amused with Hodge's terrors in a scene 
where the Beggar proceeds to call up the Devil in order to discover 
the needle, the missing article is found, sticking in the breeches, by 
Hodge, who roars out with mingled pain and delight when its prick 
announces the recovery of the long-lost little implement. This droll 
production is full of a real verve and rude richness of language, and 
the characters are delineated with broad strokes of truth and a rustic 
animation. It was the work of John Still, who ultimately became 
Bishop of Bath and Wells, and was probably acted at the university. 
Its versification — for it is, like its predecessor, in rhyme — is rather 
more loose and irregular than that of ' Ralph Royster Doyster,' and 
is an excellent vehicle for the rustic shrewdness and broad humour 
which distinguish it. This curious play has been compared to the 
famous comedy of 'Patelin,' which was one of the earliest comic 



106 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. V» 



efforts of the French stage, but we think the English piece superior 
in point of vigour and naturalness. 

While comedy, as we have just seen, appears to have made a very 
striking and rapid advance in this period of English literature, it is 
singular enough that the earliest tragedies in our language should 
exhibit all the poverty, stiffness, and formality of manner consequent 
upon a close imitation of the classic models. The early dramatic 
authors, although they had sense and taste enough to look for the ' 
materials of their comedy into the abundant mine of oddity and 
humour offered by the domestic life of their own country, did not 
venture, in their tragic delineations, to cast off the rigid yoke of 
classic form and precedent. The tragedy of ^ Ferrex and Porrex,' 
written by Thomas Sackville, afterwards Earl of Dorset, and Thomas 
Norton, was acted by the students of the Inner Temple before Queen 
Elizabeth in the year 1561. It is considered to be the earliest 
tragedy in the language. Its subject is founded upon a legend of 
the almost fabulous epochs of British history, and the leading inci- 
dent resembles that of the story of Eteocles, and Polynices, which 
has again been repeated by Schiller in his ' Braut von Messina a 
tale, singularly enough, found in the annals of various nations and 
distinct periods. 'Ferrex and Porrex' exhibits in all its details a 
servile adherence to the technical forms of the classic drama, in the 
fewness of the persons, the uniform gravity and philosophic stateli- 
ness of the language, and, above all, in the retention of the chorus. 
Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the formal 
solemnity of the dialogue of this play — the perpetual severity of 
the style — the apophthegms with which it is crowded — 

"Dry chips of short-lung'd Seneca — " 

the intense care to preserve a tone of regal dignity which prevails 
throughout the work, and the freedom, richness, and idiomatic 
humour which distinguish the comedies written previous to its appear- 
ance — qualities which were afterwards recalled to tragedy by the 
great authors of the Shakspearian school. 

After 'Ferrex and Porrex' we pass rapidly over a long list of 
works all more or less characterised by the same classical stiffness 
and adherence to dramatic dignity, and which were in almost every 
case either direct adaptations from other languages, or, when founded 
upon events in the early history of the country, always composed 
upon the same classical models. After enumerating a few of them 
we will proceed to give an idea of the mechanism of the theatres at 
the dawning of our dramatic literature, and the general condition of 
the art previous to the appearance of Shakspeare : — ' Damon and 
Pythias,' written by Richard Edwards, and acted at Oxford in 1566; 
the comedy of 'The Supposes,' taken from 'I Suppositi' of Ariosto, 
and 'Jocasta,' a tragedy, imitated from Euripides; 'Tancred and 



CHAP, v.] 



EARLY ENGLISH THEATRES. 



107 



Gismnncia/ acted in 1568 ; 'Promos and Cassandra/ ten years 
afterwards, written by George "Whetstone ; and a number of historical 
plays, as 'The Troublesome Reign of King John/ 'The Famous 
Victories of Henry V./ ' The Chronicle History of Leir, King of 
England/ and a multitude of others, chiefly valuable as being the 
mine from which Shakspeare afterwards extracted his materials. 
These works were generally performed before the court, and must be 
considered as the first rude and imperfect essays of that grandest 
dramatic school which forms the chief literary glory of the reigns 
of Elizabeth and James L 

It is singular to remark that, while the theatres of this period 
were of the rudest construction and the appliances for producing the 
illusion of the scene were yet in a most imperfect state, the dramatic 
profession should have numbered in its ranks men who carried their 
art to a pitch of splendour which succeeding ages have neither equal- 
led nor approached. It seems as though the very insufficiency of the 
material contrivances only tended to make these great men rely upon 
their own genius to produce impressions upon the imagination of 
their audience more vivid and intense than the rude theatre of the 
time could hope to make upon their senses. The actors of this 
time, who were in many cases dramatic authors also, generally associ- 
ated themselves into a sort of joint-stock company, and either travel- 
led about the country, performing in the houses of the nobility, and 
for the amusement of the people on temporary stages in the yards 
of inns, or established themselves in some of the numerous theatres 
of London. These latter buildings, though erected expressly for the 
performance of plays, retained many peculiarities traceable to the 
custom of acting in inns. They were uncovered, excepting over the 
stage ; and the scenery, if it deserves the name, was of the rudest 
description, and consisted generally, till the time of Davenant at the 
Eestoration, of nothing but a few curtains of tapestry or painted 
canvas, suspended bo as to give the actors the power of making their 
exit and entrance, as if into a room, square, forest, street, &c. As 
the Elizabethan dramas are remarkable for the frequent supposed 
changes of scene which take place in them, the spot presented to the 
audience was indicated by the simplest expedient ; a placard was 
fixed to one of the curtains, bearing the name of the city or country 
supposed, and this placard was changed for another at a change of 
scene : if, for example, the action was to be imagined in Padua, an 
inscription with the word "Padua'' was suspended in view of the 
audience ; should the scene be supposed to take place in a palace, a 
throne and canopy, called a " state," would be pushed forward ; if in 
a tavern, the production of a table with bottles and glasses upon it 
— if in a court, a combination of the " state,'^ with a table bearing 
pens and ink, were all that was necessary to give the hint or sugoes- 
tion to the imaginative minds of an Elizabethan audience. Yv o 



108 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. V. 



know, from innumerable passages of the old dramatists, that it was 
customary for the " gallants,'^ dandies, or rafflnes of the period, to 
sit during the performance on chairs placed on the stage in full view 
of the audience, smoking their pipes and exhibiting the splendour of 
their dress, and scrupling not to criticise aloud the drama which was 
going forward — a circumstance which must have still further injured 
the probability of the scene. At the back of the stage was erected 
a species of balcony or scaffolding of various platforms, on which 
appeared the persons who were supposed to speak from a window, 
from the wall of a besieged city, and so forth ; and there were also 
permanent projections in various parts of the stage, behind which 
the actors might retire, in order unobserved to overhear and see 
what was going on — a dramatic expedient so much used in the 
theatre of every country and period. 

It must not be forgotten, by any one who desires to form a correct 
idea of the Elizabethan stage, that the female parts were acted by 
boys, no woman having appeared as a performer in England until the 
Restoration, when the possibility that the other sex could represent 
fictitious characters seems first to have been demonstrated in Italy, 
whence the example was rapidly followed in England and elsewhere. 
This circumstance is calculated to immeasurably increase our wonder 
and admiration at Shakspeare's genius, the profoundest, most delicate, 
and most inimitable of whose delineations are often his female 
characters, and who has never fallen into that coarseness of allusion 
and indulgence in double entendre which defiles the scenes of even 
the greatest of his illustrious contemporaries. Mean as was the 
scenery of the Elizabethan theatre, it would be an error to suppose 
that the dresses were in the same degree poor and unvaried. The 
actors appear to have exhibited great splendour of personal decora- 
tion, wearing, in plays of all ages and countries, the costume of their 
own time and nation — a costume, however, the anachronisms of 
which were not likely to have greatly shocked the uncritical audiences 
of the day. It is true that the universal employment, on the stage, 
of a contemporary costume has led many of the authors into the 
commission of trifling breaches of chronological or geographical cor- 
rectness, giving, in Massinger, watches to Spartan senators, and 
arming Romans with the Spanish rapier of the sixteenth century; 
but, after all, the importance of such errors is in general much over- 
rated by the critics, and they make but little impression upon the 
truly imaginative and excitable spectator, who seldom stops to verify 
dates and judge the niceties of costume. Be this as it may, the 
manly, graceful, and splendid costume of the reign of Elizabeth 
appears to have been generally employed, as it still is retained (in 
our opinion with great propriety) in all those plays of imaginative 
character, the scene and age of whose supposed action is incapable 
of being strictly assigned and particularised. 



CHAP, v.] STATE OF THE DRAMATIC PROFESSION. 



109 



The literary and even the personal career of most of the great 
dramatists of this period is in many respects so much the same, and 
also tends in so great a degree to throw light upon the true charac- 
ter of their works, that we will make a few general remarks on this 
subject before entering into any critical or biographical details ; by 
so doing also we hope to give a clearer notion of our national stage 
at this vigorous and brilliant period of its existence. The immortal 
men who have illustrated this portion of our literature were, in a 
great majority of cases, persons of academical education — in some 
instances, as in those of Ben Jonson and Chapman, they were 
distinguished for their learning, even in a learned age. In a multi- 
tude of instances, too, they were young men of violent passions and 
desperate fortune, who rushed up to the capital from their academic 
retirement of- Oxford or Cambridge, and thought to find in the 
theatre the source of a rapid and turbid glory, and perhaps the means 
for indulging, with little exertion to themselves, in the riotous plea- 
sures of the town, elevated the while by the spirit of freedom and 
intellect which prevailed in the theatrical circle. They almost all of 
them began their career as actors, and it is to this circumstance that 
we must attribute some of the peculiar excellences of their way of 
writing. It made them consummate masters of what is called 
" stage-effect,' ' the art of placing their characters in the most 
striking and picturesque situations, though at the same time it 
tended to increase that- taste for violent exao^o-eration and inconsistent 
passion which forms one of their evident defects. They were not 
calm, contemplative scholars, building up, in the silence of their 
study, structures of elaborate and artificial character; but men — 
active, suffering, enjoying men; who had mingled in the serious 
business of life, and painted its smiles and its tears, its grandeur 
and its littleness, from incessant and personal observation. They 
wrote, too, for an audience eager for novelty, thirsting and hungering 
for strong, true passion — an audience composed, not of the court, 
but of the body of the people. On reading the dramas of this 
period we cannot understand how human sensibilities could bear the 
shock of such terrible pathos as we find in these wonderful works — 
agony piled upon agony till it becomes almost too powerful when 
read; what then must it have been when represented with all the 
graces of delivery! The truth is, that ''there were giants in those 
days," and the spectators cared not how painfully their sympathies 
were awakened, provided they were moved strongly, naturally, and 
directly. 

The language, too, in which these terrible or playful scenes were 
written, was a medium admirably suited to the purpose and to the 
time: it was in the highest degree rich, varied, tender, and majestic; 
adorned with all the graces of classical imagery, but without a trace 
of pedantry or formahty. The great object of these writers was 



110 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. [CIIAP. VI. 



Passion; as Dignity had been the principal aim of the Greek 
dramatists. They therefore directed all their efforts to a faithful 
delineation of Nature, and made their scene a true mirror of Life 
itself, mingling the grave and the merry, the serious and the comic, 
in the same play, the same scene, and even in the same speech. 
And thus they have produced a constellation of immortal works, 
which, like the creations of the greatest among them all, "were not 
for an age, but for all time;'^ and which, notwithstanding the great 
and grievous faults with which their excellences are contrasted, will 
be read with still increasing ardour and admiration through age after 
age, because in them Art has been but the interpreter and handmaid 
of Nature ! 



CHAPTER YI. 

MARLOW AND SHAKSPEARE. 

Marlow: his Career and Works — His Faustus — His Death — Contemporary 
Judgments on his Genius. Shakspeare : His Birth, Education, and Early 
Life — Traditions respecting Him — His Marriage — Early Studies — Goes lo 
London — His Career — Death and Monument — Order of his Works — Roman 
Plays — His Diction — Characters. 

The remark which we made in the preceding chapter respecting 
the general character and career of the great dramatists of the 
Elizabethan era will be found to apply so universally as to render it 
unnecessary for us to give biographical details of individuals whose 
life was, for the most part, a constant alternation of squalid poverty 
and of temporary success. 

The profession of playwright at the period we are considering was 
held in but low esteem ; in fact, was not raised in any perceptible 
degree above the occupation of the actor. It will be found, indeed, 
that most of the great authors we are speaking of were themselves 
actors, as well as writers for the stage ; and this circumstance undoubt- 
edly tended to give their productions some of those peculiarities which 
so strongly distinguish this school of dramatists from any other which 
ever existed in the world. The peculiarities so communicated were, 
as might naturally be expected, both good and evil. Writing for an 
audience of the most miscellaneous character, and addressing them- 
selves at the same time to the learned and the ignorant, to the refined 
and to the illiterate, they were obliged to seek for matter adapted to 
every taste ; now gratifying the most elegant tastes of the courtly and 
scholarlike noble, and then, in the same play — often in the same 



CHAP. VI.] 



PEELE, NASH, GREENE, LODGE. 



Ill 



scene — tickling the coarser fancy of the rude and jovial artisan. It 
is in some measure, therefore, to the popularity of the drama as a 
favourite amusement, at this period, of all ranks, that we owe much 
of what is most grand, most airy, and most romantic, in the Eliza- 
bethan theatre, and also, it cannot be denied, a good deal of the 
irregularity that characterises these wonderful compositions — their 
strange mixture of elevated passion and mean buffoonery; much of 
their sublimity, and much also of their meanness. 

It should be carefully borne in mind that the above remarks apply 
universally (though of course not in the same degree or proportion) 
to all the dramatists of the Shakspearian or Elizabethan school, some 
being distinguished for pathos, some for sublimity, others for sweet- 
ness of fancy and a "Sicilian fruitfulness'^ of beautiful diction and 
harmony. Passing, therefore, over John Lyly, the affected euphuist 
and fantastical innovator on the language of the court, but whose 
dramas are distinguished by an exquisite grace and Grecian purity 
of construction, and whose songs in particular are models of airiness 
and music, we come to Peele, Nash, Greene, and Lodge, the immedi- 
ate predecessors of Mario w, who was himself, so to speak, the fore- 
runner and herald of Shakspeare. 

The luxuriant fancy of his ' David and Bethsabe,' and the kingly 
amplification of his ' Edward I.,^ would have given Peele's name no 
mean place on the national Parnassus ; the " gall and salt'^ of Nash's 
vigorous satire would have j)reserved his memory in the admiration 
of his country ; Greene's " happy talent, clear spirit, and lively 
imagination" would have saved him from that oblivion whence his 
works are seldom recalled but by the painful commentator on Shak- 
speare; and the romantic spirit and woodland freshness of Lodge's 
graceful muse might have earned him a lasting niche in " Fame's 
proud temple." But all these bright intellects were quenched and 
swallowed up in the immeasurable splendour of their great successor. 
At noon we know, as well as at midnight, the stars are in the sky, 
but we can only see them in the absence of the sun. 

The dates of the birth and death of the above dramatists are as 
follows: — Lyly, born 1554, died some time after 1600; George 
Peele, a fellow-actor and shareholder with Shakspeare in the Black- 
friars Theatre, died before 1599; Nasli, born in Suffolk, 1564, and 
died, "after a life spent,'"* as he pathetically says himself, "in 
fantastical satirism, in whose veins heretofore I misspent my spirit, 
and prodigally conspired against good hours," also about 1600 ; 
Greene died in 1592 ; and Lodge, who at the end of his life is sup- 
posed to have renouDced the stage, and become a physician of 
eminence, is reported to have died in London of the plague in 1625. 

While these authors had been gradually but imperceptibly im- 
proving and developing the infant drama of England, we now come 
to the great writer who performed for our stage nearly the same 
9* 



112 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CIIAP. VI. 



offices as were rendered to that of Greece^ according to the well- 
known dictum of Horace, by ^Eschylus : — 

" Et docuit magnumque loqui, nitique cothurno." 

This was Christopher Marlow. Born at Canterbury, about the year 
1562, he received a learned education at Bene't College, Cambridge, 
and is supposed to have been attracted by the reputation he had ob- 
tained by his first dramatic essay, the tragedy of ' Tamburlaine,^ to 
embrace the profession of actor. The play to which we have just 
alluded was calculated, from the wild oriental nature of its subject, 
to give a too free current to Marlow's natural tendency to bombastic 
fury of declamation, and gigantic monstrosity and exaggeration of 
sentiment. Jonson has left on record his admiration for " Marlow's 
mighty line,'' as he so nobly expresses the peculiar character of this 
dramatist's wild and swelling spirit ; and the iEschylus of the Eng- 
lish stage, like his great Athenian prototype, seems to have impressed 
his contemporaries with a most exalted respect for his sublime and 
irregular genius. Indeed it may easily be conceived that, as gran- 
deur and force are the qualities most likely to strike the imagination 
of the public at a period when art is in its infancy, so the too often 
accompanying faults of tumidity and exaggeration are generally per- 
ceptible at such a period. The biting raillery of Aristophanes has 
shown no mercy to the extravagance, obscurity, and bombast of ^s- 
chylus ; and we cannot, therefore, be surprised to find the deeper and 
more delicate raillery of Shakspeare fixing upon the absurdities of 
Marlov/'s gigantic dramas. The two greatest works of this powerful 
writer are undoubtedly the ' Faustus' and the ^ Jew of Malta,' the 
latter of which was produced before 1593. We trust we shall be 
excused for attempting to give some account of the first of these ex- 
traordinary works, when we mention the obligations incurred by 
Goethe to the ^Faustus' of Marlow, obligations which the patriarch 
of Weimar never failed to acknowledge. As in the 'Faust' of 
Goethe, Marlow's hero is a learned man of Wittenberg, who, finding 
the vanity of those studies which have made him the glory and envy 
of all Germany, makes a compact with the Evil One that he may 
enjoy, in exchange for his eternal salvation, a certain period of youth, 
beauty, and sensual indulgence. It must be confessed that, in the 
grandeur and vastness of the satire on human follies, in the tender- 
ness of the pathetic scenes, in the admirable conception of the cha- 
racter of Margaret — that daisy, dew-besprent with tears, and bloom- 
ing so sweetly at the mouth of an infernal abyss of sin and misery 
which yawns to engulf it — and, above all, in the complete creation 
of that wondrous Mephistophiles, the German bard has shown a 
power not approached by the old English bard. In the pictures, 
however, of terror, despair, and unavailing remorse, and particularly 
in the terrific scene when Faustus is expecting the approach of the 



CHAP, yi.] 



MARLOW: HIS DEATH. 



11; 



demon to claim performance of the dread contract, — in these, and in 
a rich glow of classic imagery, and in the appropriate colouring of 
gloom and horror thrown over the whole action, we must be pardoned 
if we think our countryman superior. The 'Jew of Malta' is the 
portraiture of revenge and hatred embodied in the common type of 
the Jewish character as it appeared to the popular imagination of the 
sixteenth century ; that is, under a form at once terrific, odious, and 
contemptible. Not among the least astonishing proofs of Shakspeare's 
divine and prescient mind is the fact that, living at a period when 
the Jews were still persecuted, and when popular prejudice — that in- 
destructible monster — still believed the calumnies of the Middle 
Ages, and fancied that the Jews sacrificed a Christian child at the 
Passover, and practised the forbidden arts of magic and necromancy, 
that Shakspeare should have been victorious over the prejudices which 
still enchained the mind even of the learned Marlow, and should have 
given us, in Shylock, the portrait, the living image, of " an Israelite 
indeed,'' — not the absurd bugbear of the Elizabethan stage, with his 
red nose, his impossible riches, and equally impossible crimes, but a 
real breathing man, desperately cruel and revengeful it is true, but 
cruel and revengeful on what seem to him good grounds, and only so 
far a Jew as not the less to remain a human being like ourselves. 
Nothing can surpass the absurdity of Marlow's plot in this play — an 
absurdity hardly compensated by occasional passages of majestic 
though somewhat tumid declamation. Few things, for instance, can 
be finer than the dying speech of Barabas, the Jew — 

" Die life, fly soul, tongue curse thy fill, and die !" — 
or his comparison of himself to the ominous and obscene bird — 

"The sad-presaging raven, that tolls 
The sick man'' s passport from her hollow beak, 
And in the shadow of the silent night 
Doth shake contagion from her sable wings." 

Marlow's life was as wild and irregular as his genius, and his 
death at once tragic and deplorable. It is related that in an un- 
worthy brawl, in a place and with a person (according to some 
accounts a serving-man) as disreputable as the occasion, he endea- 
voured to use his dagger on the person of his antagonist, who, seizing 
Marlow's wrist, gave a difi'erent direction to the poniard; the weapon 
entered Marlow's own head, ''in such sort," to use the words of 
Anthony Wood, "that, notwithstanding all the means of surgery 
that could be brought, he shortly after died of his wound." 

He was buried at Deptford on the 1st of June, 1593 ; and many 
dramas have come down to us bearing the impress of his genius, and 
several, indeed, ascribed to his name : but such was the prevalence 
of his style when he wrote, and so universal at this period was the 
custom for several dramatists to work together or successively at the 



114 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VI. 



same piece, that it is very dilHcult to affiliate with certainty the 
dramas of the Elizabethan age, except those of Shakspeare. 

The finest, perhaps, of these works is the ^Edward II.,' which 
contains many passages of deepest pathos. As a proof of the high 
reputation enjoyed by Marlow among his contemporaries, we will 
quote the spirited lines of Drayton : — 

"Next Marlow, bathed in the Thespian springs, 
Had in him those brave translunary things 
That the first poets had ; his verses were 
All air and fire, which made his verses clear: 
For that fine madness he did still retain 
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain," 

In taking our leave of this great and brilliant genius, we cannot 
but regret that his untimely death deprived his works of the regu- 
larity which time and experience would probably have given to them ; 
and whether we speak of him as a man or as an author, we may very 
well apply to him the lines pronounced in his own tragedy by the 
scholar over the mangled limbs of Faustus : — 

" Cut is the branch that might have grown fiiU straight ; 
And burned is Apollo's laurel bough, 
That sometime grew within this learned man." 

There is a great deal of melancholy truth in that profound verse 

of the modern poet, , 

" The world knows nothing of its greatest men:" 

and this verity will especially apply to that class of which we would 
desire the most minute details — the Poets. Of Homer we know so 
little that his very existence and personality have been brought in 
question ] respecting Virgil w^e possess only a few vague and cold 
notices; of the private life, and, above all, the intellectual life, of 
Milton, we possess no information but what we can glean from his 
writings ; and of a greater yet than these — Shakspeare — all the 
details which we possess may be condensed into a few lines, and are 
principally derived from the most frigid and unattractive of all 
sources, legal documents, the poet's will holding among these the 
most forward place. 

William Shakspeare or Shakespeare was born, as everybody knows, 
in the little town of Stratford, on the Avon, in Warwickshire, in the 
month of April, 1564. He was baptized on the 26th, which has 
originated the poetical, and certainly not very improbable tradition, 
that the greatest of Englishmen was born on the 23rd of April, the 
anniversary of St. George, the tutelary saint of his country. His 
father was a dealer in wool (not a butcher, as was Imig ignorantly 
supposed), and had at one time been in flourishing circumstances, 
for be had occupied the office of high-bailiff, or chief municipal dig- 
nitary, in his native town, but he appears, notwithstanding his having 
married an heiress possessed of some little fortune, to have gradually 



CHAP. VI.] 



SHAKSPEARE : HIS EARLY LIFE. 



115 



sunk into great distress, and ultimately to have received charity from 
the corporation of which he had once been a prominent member. 
" Genius/' as WashiDgton Irving prettily says, " delights to nestle 
its offspring in strange places ; " and it is a proud distinction of 
England that its literature should number among its brightest names 
so large a proportion of men born in the humblest ranks of society. 
It is beneath low roofs, and few are humbler than that venerable 
one at Stratford, that the cradles of our greatest men were rocked ; 
it is by poor firesides that their genius budded and expanded ; and 
this is the reasou why our literature, more than that of any other 
country, echoes the universal sentiments of the human heart, and 
speaks a language intelligible to every country and every age. 

Of Shakspeare's childhood and education nothing is accurately 
known ; perhaps the poverty of his father, by preventing him giving 
his son more than very limited and rustic instruction, enabled the 
boy's intellect to develop itself naturally and gradually, unstifFened 
and uncrippled by the too early discipline of a schoolmaster — that 
discipline which, like the swathing and swaddling-bands of the inju- 
dicious nurse, so often cripples and deforms what it is intended to 
render strong and beautiful. His early years were probably passed 
amid the smiling scenery surrounding Stratford, marking, with pro- 
phetic eye, every tint of cloud and stream, every feature of external 
beauty, and laying up a store of observations on the passions, the 
sentiments, and the oddities of human character, — 

"While he was yet a boy, 

Careless of books, yet having felt the power 

Of Nature, by the gentle agency. 

Of natural objects then led on to feel 

For passions that were not his own, and think 

(At random and imperfectly indeed) 

On man, the heart of man, and human life." 

There can be little doubt of Shakspeare having at some early 
period of his life been employed as clerk to some country attorney; 
for he shows in all his works a technical acquaintance with the 
phraseology of the English law — an acquaintance, indeed, which 
could only have been acquired by actual practice : this circumstance 
is also further proved by some of the few passages in the writings of 
his contemporaries in which mention is made of the great dramatist. 
His- life at Stratford, according to the vague and imperfect tradi- 
tions subsisting after his death in his native place, was idle, and 
perhaps even riotous : careful investigation has shown the impossi- 
• bility of the events assigned by the well-known anecdote of the deer- 
stealing in Sir Thomas Lucy's park at Charlecote, as the immediate 
cause of his quitting Stratford and first adventuring in the career of 
London life. However reluctant we may be, in our eagerness to 
know the details of such a life, we must resign this picturesque 
story of the youthful Shakspeare's woodland misdemeanour, and 



116 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CIIAP. VT. 



seek for some other cause of his leaving Warwickshire. This is to 
be found in the register of the poet's marriage with Anne Hathaway, 
the daughter of a small farmer residing at Shottery, a village about 
a mile from Stratford. On the 28th of November, 1582, Shak- 
speare obtained at Worcester a licence of marriage, permitting the 
ceremony to take place icith once asking of the banns, a circumstance 
which shows that this important act of life was accompanied with 
great hurry and precipitation, the more obviously so as Shakspeare 
was at this time a minor, and consequently unable to enter legally 
into any contract for himself In this document, therefore, we find 
the names of two persons as sureties for the bridegroom, who was, 
it must be observed, seven years younger than his wife. All this 
precipitation, however, is explained by the register of baptisms in 
the church of Stratford, by which it appears that the poet's daugh- 
ter Susanna was christened on the 26th of May, 1583, or only six 
months after the marriage. In a year and a half two other children, 
twins, were born to the poet, who had no offspring afterwards. 
Finding himself thus, at the early age of nineteen, a husband and a 
father, and probably perceiving that the obscurity of a retired 
village was no sphere for his intellectual powers, our poet about this 
time betook himself to London, there to commence his brief career 
of glory. Educated so imperfectly as he must have been, it is only 
to solitary and intense, though perhaps desultory study, that he 
could have owed that extensive acquaintance with books which he 
undoubtedly possessed ; and it is therefore fair to conclude that he 
had been a diligent reader before he left his native place. In the 
employment of classical images, for example, Shakspeare shows no 
inferiority to any of that great number of dramatists at this period 
who were men of academical education; many of them indeed men 
of distinguished learning. His writings abound in passages indi- 
cating a very extensive and accurate acquaintance with classical ima- 
gery, and at the same time his splendid imagination has imparted to 
such allusions a vivacity, a brilliancy, and a glory not to be found in 
any other author. Much controversy has been raised with respect 
to Shakspeare's scholarship, and minute and ingenious investigation 
has been employed not only to determine how far he was acquainted 
with the literature of Greece and Rome, with the Italian, Spanish, 
and French languages, but even to ascertain what books he had 
read ; and while some have considered his acquirements as unusually 
great, others have thought to exalt his glory by denying him even a 
moderate share of learning. The truth is, however, probably be- 
tween these two extremes ; and when we reflect that many of the 
great authors of antiquity, with whose thoughts he was evidently 
familiar, were translated, when he wrote, into English, we may be 
justified in considering him to have had a tolerable acquaintance 
with Latin and French, two languages which en^er largely (though 



CHAP. VI.] SHAKSPEAEE — HIS AERIVAL IN LONDON. 



117 



in a comparativelj impure state) into the legal phraseology of 
England. 

Plutarch, for example, had been translated into English, and Chap- 
man's grand version of Homer had doubtless rolled its majestic har- 
monies over the ear of Shakspeare : this was enough for such a mind, 
whosejissimilative power was so immense. With such intellects the 
slightest tint is sufl&cient : from the mere ruins and imperfect frag- 
ments of the Beautiful, they can build up a perfect and complete 
ediSce, even as the eye of Cuvier, from a tooth, from a fragment of 
bone of some antediluvian reptile, could reconstruct the whole system 
of animal life which had passed away for ever. Of all the attempts 
in modern literature to reproduce the manners and sentiments of the 
classical periods, Shakspeare's are by far the most successful : we 
need only refer to the characters of Coriolanus, of Cleopatra, of Caesar, 
of Ulysses; while in the employment of classical imagery no poet has 
ever exhibited such mastery and grace. 

Shakspeare's first introduction to London life and to the theatrical 
profession has been as much misrepresented by tradition as the cause 
of his leaving his native town. The legend goes, that the poet, on. 
his first arrival in the metropolis, was reduced to such distress as to 
hold horses at the door of the theatres, and that he thus ultimately 
obtained bis introduction " behind the scenes." This, however, like 
the story of the deer-stealing, is a tale totally without foundation. 
We have seen in a former chapter that the companies of actors were 
occasionally in the habit of going about the country, and performing 
at the houses of the nobility : it was very possible for Shakspeare to 
have gratified that youthful desire which so many of us have felt for 
a peep into the enchanted world of the stage, long before he even 
thought of going to seek his fortune in London. This is the more 
probable as Thomas Green, an actor of note at the time, was a native 
of Stratford, and, some have supposed, a kinsman of the poet; and 
Richard Burbage, the greatest tragedian of the day, and perhaps one 
of the greatest actors whom England ever produced, was a Warwick- 
shire man. We know also that the actors were frequently in the 
habit of visiting Stratford, and the probability is, that it was by 
G-reen's invitation that Shakspeare first joined a troop of players. 
That he was possessed of poetical genius could not have been un- 
known even at this time, as it is difficult to believe that his first 
works — the ^ Yenus and Adonis^ and the 'Lucrece' — were not com- 
, posed during his residence at Stratford. These two works, though 
disfigured by that Italian taste which was prevalent at the time, and 
though containing passages of a somewhat too warm complexion for 
the stricter taste of the present day, are full of the softest harmony 
and the most luxuriant imagery : the youthful fancy of the poet 
seems to run riot in the richest profusion : these works bear all the 
marks, and exhibit all the defects, of youth — but it is of the youth 
of a Shakspeare. 



118 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VI. 



Our poet, then, became a member (and of course a share-holder 
also) of the Blackfriars theatre, and seems to have steadily and rapidly 
risen in reputation among his comrades, for in November, 1589, 
Shakspeare's name is inserted eleventh in a list of fifteen proprietors; 
in 1596 his name is fifth in a list of eight shareholders ; and in 1603 
it was second in the new patent granted by James I. As he increased 
in fame and importance at his theatre he gradually became proprietor 
of the wardrobe and stage-properties, which, together with the shares 
he previously possessed, were valued at 1400/., a sum equivalent to 
nearly 7000/. of our present money. He was also a large proprietor 
in the Grlobe theatre, and his annual income is calculated at at least 
1500/. As an actor he is said not to have exceeded mediocrity, 
though this is hardly in accordance with the tradition of two or three 
of the parts which he is said to have performed, and which would by 
no means be intrusted to an indifferent actor. These are Hieronymo, 
in the ' Spanish Tragedy,^ to which we have alluded in another place ; 
the Grhost in his own 'Hamlet/ and Adam in 'As You Like It,'— 
characters, we repeat, which would now never be placed in the hands 
of inferior talent. Besides this, it is impossible to read the admirable 
directions to the players in the second scene of the third act of 
' Hamlet' without being convinced that no man ever possessed so 
delicate and profound an appreciation for the true excellences of the 
histrionic art, or could so well communicate its precepts. From the 
list of characters just enumerated, it will be seen that Shakspeare's 
line, as it is called, was the old men of the mimic world, or what is 
denominated on the French stage the peres nobles. 

It was in the interval between his coming up to London and the 
year 1611 that he produced the tliirty'Scven plays which form the 
first folio edition ; and he appears to have always retained the inten- 
tion of retiring, as soon as he had acquired a competency, to his native 
place. As he grew richer he purchased land in Stratford, and became 
the proprietor of New Place, the principal house in the town, in the 
garden of which there long was to be seen a mulberry-tree, said to 
have been planted by his own illustrious hand. Will our readers 
believe that this tree was actually cut down by order of a clergyman 
of Stratford, under the pretext of its attracting so many curious pil- 
grims to the spot, which had fallen into the possession of this clerical 
Vandal ! Shakspeare continued during his whole residence in Lon- 
don to pay annual visits to Stratford, and about 1612 he retired alto- 
gether to New Place, to pass the evening of his glorious life in that 
calm and dignified retirement which he had so nobly earned. There 
is something touching in this desire of our great poet; something 
well in accordance with his divine genius in this tender recollection 
of his birthplace, this returning in honoured manhood to those well- 
remembered scenes of infancy which had greenly dwelt in his re- 
membrance, and over which he was to cast, till time shall be no 



CHAP. VI.] SHAKSPEARE : ORDEPv OE HIS WORKS. 



119 



more, the magic of his name. In this retirement, so beautiful by 
nature, and so hallowed by the most tender recollections in the society 
of his childhood's friends, and among the quiet home-scenes of pas- 
toral England, the poet passed four years of what must appear to us 
felicity as unmingled as ever fell to the lot of man j and on the 23d 
of April, 1616, he died, having just completed his 52d year. Who 
ever, in so short a life, did so much for immortality ? His widow 
survived him seven years : his two daughters were married, and one 
of them had three sons, but these latter all died without issue, and 
consequently, as the poet's only son, Hamnet, died young, there now 
exists no lineal descendant of the poet. Shakspeare was buried in 
the parish-church of Stratford, and over the place of his interment 
there has been erected a mural monument in the Italian taste of the 
da}^, being a half-length of the poet, seated, with a pen in his hand, 
and bearing a laudatory inscription in Latin verse. This bust is un- 
doubtedly a portrait, and was originally painted to imitate life, so that 
it gave an idea of the complexion, colour of the eyes, hair, &c., of 
the original. Malone, more barbarous than a churchwarden, however, 
covered this most interesting work with a thick coat of white paint, 
from which it has not been and cannot be rescued. Shakspeare ap- 
pears in this portrait to have been singularly handsome : the outline 
of the face is regular and oval the extraordinary height, breadth, 
and peculiar airy lightness of the forehead in particular makes it one 
of those heads which, once seen, never can be forgotten. This is 
perhaps the most remarkable peculiarity of the head, and this is per- 
ceivable in all the portraits. The forehead is really vast, and yet 
singularly light — a worthy temple for such lovely and majestic oracles. 
The hair, which is divided on the top of the head, is, like his beard, 
of an auburn or golden sunny brown; his complexion is healthy, and 
the expression of the whole face is in perfect accordance with what 
we learn of his generous, gentle character. 

There is very little doubt but that Shakspeare' s literary career as 
a dramatic author was in no respects different from what we have 
described as almost universal at the period. He began by the re- 
arrangement of old plays, and it was probably while engaged in this 
mean and almost mechanical employment that he felt the first elec- 
tric flash of that admirable genius which was afterwards to burn 
with such a steady splendour in his great dramas. Many of the 
works which came into the world with the passport of his name, nay, 
some which have found a place in the editions of his collected works, 
were, in reality, only rechauffes made by him, or older works to 
which his pen had only added some scene, character, or speech. Of 
the former of these two kinds we may instance the ' Yorkshire 
Tragedy,' and ' Arden of Fevershamj' and of the latter, 'Pericles,' 
and 'Titus Andronicus.' A reference to any edition of Shakspeare 
will inform the reader that the two former plays are not included in 



120 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VL 



the poet's works, and that the two latter are. We find then in this 
matter that the editors have acted with partiality ; for whatever claims 
^ Pericles' and ' Titus' possess to the honour of being called Shaks- 
peare's might be safely maintained by the two other dramas. Con- 
sequently either ' Pericles' and ' Titus' ought to be excluded from 
the list of our poet's productions, or the ^Yorkshire Tragedy/ 
^ Arden of Feversham,' and several others, ought to be admitted. 
The chronology of the plays has been investigated by the commen- 
tators with a painful and laudable minuteness ; but we perhaps hardly 
possess sufficient data to enable us to demonstrate with any degree 
of certainty the order of their production. This is much to be 
regretted, as our ignorance deprives us of the pleasure and improve- 
ment to be obtained from tracing the gradual development of Shaks- 
peare's genius and art. It seems to us probable that ' Othello' and the 
' Tempest' were among the last of these wonderful productions, and 
the ' Two Gentlemen of Verona,' the ' Comedy of Errors,' and 
^ Love's Labour's Lost,' were among the first. It should be remarked, 
however, that our opinion is founded chiefly on internal evidence of ., 
style and treatment, a criterion not always to be depended on. 

The sources from whence Shakspeare drew the materials for his 
works were in every respect the same as those to which we have 
already alluded. It would be highly interesting to read the old 
plays of which he made so copious a use, and to remark what were 
the rude hints of character, what the coarse draughts and outlines 
of passion, which he has transformed into such impersonations as 
Lady Macbeth, as Jaques, as Ariel. The most essential peculiarity 
of his genius appears that intuitive and instantaneous certainty with 
which he threw himself, so to say, into a character, and perceived 
all the limits of its personality. The personations of all other 
dramatists appear like bas-reliefs, or pictures, presenting but one 
surface to the eye of the intellectual spectator; those of Shakspeare 
resemble statues, which may be viewed from all points equally well, 
without losing any of their likeness to reality. But why should we 
limit our words ? are they not rather living, moving beings, with 
flesh and blood and passions like our own ? In reading the dramatic 
works of all other men, you may admire the truth with which 
the character is conceived, and the skill with which it is set in motion, 
but you feel that it is created for a particular purpose, and set before 
you in a particular light. In Shakspeare you seem, on the contrary, 
to perceive depth beyond depth of personal identity or individuality, 
stretching far beyond human ken, and losing itself in the unfathomed 
abysses of the heart of man. It is as when you fix your eyes upon 
the vastnesses of the summer sky, or upon the deeper purple of a 
tropic ocean, — your gaze seems to die away in the immeasurable 
profound. It will not seem too much to say of Shakspeare's charac- 
ters, that there is not one, among the thousand figures which people 



CHAP. VI.] 



shakspeare: his works. 



121 



his living scenes, to which you might not assign (from the elements 
given by the poet in any number of speeches, small or great, put 
into its mouth) a whole train of antecedent events, and possible 
development of character. And this is one of the most marked and 
admirable peculiarities of our poet. In the works of other drama- 
tists, the personages, conceived with what vividness you will, seem, 
so to say, ready made, and set in motion for the nonce ; while Shaks- 
peare's seem to be acted upon during the course of the events, and 
to be modified and changed just as real men and women perpetually 
are in their intercourse with the world and with each other. Where 
this wonderful creator gained the knowledge of human nature, and 
experience of human motives, which have presented him to posterity 
rather as something divine than as a mere mortal artist, it is impos- 
sible to learn. 

The naturalist knows that the details of creation are inexhaustible ; 
and Linnaeus, when he told his scholars that there were more wonders 
and mysteries in turf covered by his foot than the longest life of the 
most laborious botanist would suffice to describe or to explain, but 
expressed the difficulty encountered by the critic who attempts to 
examine the vast and inexhaustible dominions of Shakspeare's crea- 
tion. The three great subdivisions, then, may be stated as follows : 
— 1, Plays founded on subjects of classical antiquity; 2, Plays founded 
on the history, either legendary or authentic, of modern countries ; 
and 3, Dramas on romantic stories, such as the innumerable novels 
of Spain and Italy. Of the plays which take for their materials 
antique personages and manners, the most remarkable are ' Julius 
Caesar,^ ' Antony and Cleopatra,' ' Timon of Athens/ ' Coriolanus,' 
and ' Troilus and Cressida.'' In these works the spirit and tone of 
thought of the antique world is most admirably seized, and delicate 
and subtle distinctions are made between the manners of different 
epochs of Roman history. For instance, the language, turn of 
thought, and local colouring are exquisitely and profoundly Roman, 
both in ' Coriolanus,' ^Antony,' and 'Julius Csesar;' yet the reader 
is conscious that the Romans in ' Coriolanus' are as different from 
the Romans of the other two plays as was the Roman people at the 
two different epochs in question. In ' Coriolanus' every line breathes 
the simple, fervid patriotism of the republic, its rude manners, its 
severe virtues; while in the other plays we feel that the Roman 
republic has ceased to exist, and the monarchic, civilized, corrupt 
tone of manners has already come into existence. 

^ Timon of Athens' has been finely called " the Lear of private 
life;" and certainly never was there composed a grander or more 
impressive picture of profuse indiscriminate friendship punished by 
its natural offspring, ingratitude. The over-loving and over-confiding 
spirit of Timon, soft, effeminate, thirsting for universal attachment, 
degenerates into the bitterest misanthropy — like luscious wine. 



122 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VI. 



which, soured, becomes the sharpest vinegar; and what other poet 
but Shakspeare could have ventured to give, in one drama, two 
characters of misanthropy, like Timon and Apemantus, so alike 
externally, yet so strongly contrasting : the one a manhater from 
nature, the other made so by circumstances ? If the misanthropy 
of Timon be (as we have just ventured to image it) the sweet and 
* potent wine turned sour in the sunshine of a too luxuriant prosperity, 
that of the Cynic is rather the poor and acid fruit of a cold and 
barren and unloving nature, which no prosperity could render rich or 
generous. 

We need not speak here of the wonderful life, fervour, and anima- 
tion which pervade all these plays, and the lifelike reality with which 
the poet places us amid the stirring scene. Here is no idle decla- 
mation, no parade of classical propriety ; and yet how admirably are 
the great characters delineated and relieved against the moving back- 
ground of inferior interests and passions I How exquisite are those 
little glimpses into private life, afforded us, as if by accident, yet with 
such consummate skill, amid the tumult and fermentation of great 
events — the domestic scenes in ^ Coriolanus,' the revelries, the quar- 
relling, and reconciliations of Cleopatra ! The play of '■ Troilus and 
Cressida,^ though disfigured in parts by some singular anachronisms, 
is invaluable for the truly Homeric delineations of Ulysses and Aga- 
memnon. Can anything in the way of pure rhetoric be finer, more 
skilful, than the speech of Antony over the body of Caesar, or than 
the harangue of Ulysses in the ^ Troilus ? ^ "We have here the very 
essence and soul of classicism, and we have too, what the ancients 
have not given us — the household and private physiognomy of their 
times. Shakspeare and Homer are absolutely the only men who 
have ever succeeded in representing what is heroic without once 
losing sight of what is truly natural and moving. As to the 
language of these and all his plays, it would be useless to speak of 
its beauty here ; we could but repeat, and perhaps weaken in repeat- 
ing, the enthusiastic admiration of all who have been able to judge 
of this kind of merit : of all authors Shakspeare is the most natural 
and unforced in his style, and yet there is none whose words are 
either so musical in their arrangement, so striking and picturesque in 
themselves, or contain so many thoughts. Sometimes, indeed, we 
meet with paragraphs in which every important word is not only 
admirable, as conveying, strengthening, or adorning the meaning, but 
is itself an image new, bold, true, and vigorous in the highest degree. 
We open our Shakspeare at hazard : for instance, the following — 

' Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on 
The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark'''' — 

where the by the '^fine madness'^ of the poet, is made "wear/' 
and " sea-sick.'^ Again ; where iEneas says to the trumpeter, 



CHAP. VI.] 



SIIAKSPEARE : HIS WORKS. 



123 



" Trumpet, blow loud, 
Send thy hrass voice through all these lazy tents'''' — 

where the epithet " brass' ^ is transferred from the instrument to its 
sound, and the " tents" said to be " lazy/' instead of their inhabi- 
tants; or the "vagabond flag," that 

" Goes to and back, lackeying the varymg tide ;" 

and a thousand others in this — and in all the plays. 

" the quick comedians 
Extempore shall stage us ; Antony 
Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see 
Some squeaking Cleopatra hoy my greatness." 

But why multiply examples? Every page of Shakspeare would 
furnish us with many instances of such intensifying of expression, 
where some happy word conveys to us a whole train of ideas, con- 
densed into a single luminous point as it were — words so new, so 
full of meaning, and yet so unforced and natural, that the rudest 
mind perceives almost intuitively their meaning, and yet which no 
study could improve or imitate. It is this which constitutes the 
most striking peculiarity of the Shakspearian language; it is this 
point in which his treatment, his inanner^ differs from that of all 
other authors, ancient or modern, English or foreign, who ever wrote ; 
it is this which, while it justifies the almost idolatrous veneration of 
his countrymen, makes him of all authors the most untranslatable. 

All have observed the simplicity and homeliness which distinguish 
the images of this great poet, and particularly in passages of intense 
passion ; and the time has arrived when critics of all countries unite 
in appreciating the true grandeur and nature of such images, which 
are precisely those most likely to suggest themselves in moments of 
the greatest agitation. The time, we say, is past when a false and 
artificial system of so-called propriety can find fault with Lady Mac- 
beth 's terrific image — 

" Nor Heaven peep through the hlanhet of the dark, 
To cry, Hold, hold!''— 

or that admirable picture of tranquillity and silence, presenting itself, 
it should be remembered, to the imagination of a tired soldier : " not 
a mouse stirring." 

What a terrible train of guilty thoughts, of horror and unavailing 
remorse, in that short dialogue between Macbeth and his wife, begin- 
ning with the words — 

" Macb. I have done the deed: — Didst thou not hear a noise? 

Lady Mach. 1 heard the owl scream, and the crickets cry. 
Did you not speak ? 

Mach. When ? 

Lady Mach. Now. 

Macb. As I descended? 

10* 



124 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITSHATURE. [CHAP. VI. 

Lady Mad). Ay. 
Much. Hark! — 
Who lies i' the second chamber? 

But we dare not trust ourselves to quote. In Shakspeare the various 
excellences of the art are so wonderfully mingled, that it is seldom 
easy to quote one passage as a specimen of mere beautiful imagery, 
another of grand declamation, another of wit, another of humour, 
and so on. Admirable as the passages are in themselves, they are 
still more so in their places, forming strokes of character and touches 
of truth and nature. 

Of all authors Shakspeare is the one who has least imitated or 
repeated himself. All other dramatists — nay, all other men — 
conscious of successful power in some particular line of development, 
have failed to resist the natural temptation which leads us to do 
often what we know we do well. Let us imagine any other drama- 
tist capable of conceiving such a character as Hamlet, as Lear, as 
Othello, or as Falstafif. Would he not assuredly have delighted 
to repeat such grand creations, and show us these admirable figures 
in different lights and attitudes? Yet in Shakspeare, when once 
these terrible or humorous personages have quitted the scene, and 
finished that long life of woe or of merriment, condensed, by the 
poet's art, into the three short hours of dramatic existence, they dis- 
appear for ever — we hear no more of them — they vanish as com- 
pletely as real men would have done, and leave, like real men, no 
exactly similar beings behind them. 

Dealing with the universal sentiments and passions of mankind, 
this author has given us, in many places, different portraits of the 
same passion; but these delineations are as distinct and as dissimilar 
in Shakspeare as they are in nature. 

How many portraits have we of jealousy, for example ! Yet who 
cannot distinguish the jealousy of Othello from that of Leontes, that 
of Posthumus from that of Ford, and a thousand other instances ? 
The jealousy is as different as the man, yet always as true to reality. 
What an infinite multitude of fools are to be found in Shakspeare ! 
3^et no two are the least alike. We may follow an ascending scale 
of silliness through as many gradually and imperceptibly rising 
varieties of the genus, extending from almost complete imbecility to 
the highest degree of intellect, tinctured with that slight shade of 
fantastic mental distortion from which the human mind is hardly 
ever free. What a range of character from Audrey, Aguecheek, or 
Silence, to Jaques! And why stop here? Why not to Lear him- 
self, to Hamlet, to Falstaff ? It is absolutely impossible to ascribe 
any important speech in Shakspeare to the wrong person : and this 
is perhaps one of the most difiicult points of the dramatic art — a 
point which has never been reached by any author but Shakspeare, 
and sometimes by Moliere. 



CHAP. VI.] SHAKSPEAEE : HIS CHAHACTERS. 



125 



Wouderfal, too, as is the individuality and originality of the more 
passionate or humorous characters, Shakspeare has succeeded in 
giving, by light, imperceptible, infallible touches, quite as much 
reality and personality to a class of personages which in the works 
of all other writers of fiction are generally found uniform, and 
even fade — we mean the delineations of young men and women, 
the heroes and heroines of comic or romantic adventures. Even 
Fielding, Scott, and Dickens, though possessing the far greater 
facilities afforded by narrative fiction, have seldom succeeded in ren- 
dering such characters interesting in themselves ; that is, independ- 
ently of the circumstances which suiTOund them. Compare the 
Sophia and the Tom Jones of the first, the Waverley and the Miss 
Wardour of the second, the Nicholas Nickleby and the Miss May lie 
of the third, with Rosalind and Orlando, with Helena, with Hero — 
nay, even with such secondary characters as Margaret, as Mariana, 
as Laertes, as Lorenzo — and we shall see that, while the elegant, 
and sometimes even delicate, creation of the romancer owes all its 
hold on our sympathies to the trials to which it is exposed, and to 
the patience and energy with which it undergoes them, the charac- 
ters of the greatest of dramatists possess a real and distinct indi- 
viduality, as subtly though not as strongly marked as that which 
divides Lear from Falstafi", or Isabella from Beatrice. 

The great art of Shakspeare, as a portrayer of character and 
passion, seems to consist in his manner of making his personages, 
accidentally, involuntarily, nay, even in spite of themselves, express 
their own character, and admit us, as it were, into the inmost recesses 
of their hearts. And this is especially true of his passion. In the 
dramatists of the French classical school, in particular, the characters 
are very apt to give us — in noble and sounding verse, it is true, 
admirably reasoned and majestically harmonized — a description of 
the feelings which affect them. They, in short, say — " I am terri- 
fied/^ "I am angry,'^ "I am in love.^' This Shakspeare's men and 
women, like real men and women, never do. Hamlet, asked by his 
mother what is the dreadful object on which his eyes are fixed, does 
not break out into a long tirade descriptive of it, but paints his own 
terror, and the specti-e which causes it, in one line : — 

" On him, on him ! Look you, how pale he glares !" 

And this method (if it be not rather an intuition) is perceivable in 
every scene and every character : it is found in the lightest as in the 
most solemn, in the most splendid as in the most pathetic scenes. 

The development of the fable in Shakspeare is generally conducted 
with that natural yet unrestrained coherence which is found in the 
real dramas of human life. The events, it is true, are often hurried 
towards the close of the drama, and trifling and unexpected circum- 
stances, arising in the course of the action, often completely change 



126 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VI. 



what we should imagine had been the author's previous plan. But 
does not the same thing perpetually happen in the world ? Is it not 
a profound truth that the most insignificant events perpetually mo- 
dify the most important actions ? Does not experience show us that 
truth is stranger than fiction, that no event can be called unimportant 
excepting according to its consequences, and that no intellect is sufii- 
ciently vast and penetrating to trace all the consequences springing 
from even the most trivial act of our lives ? 

In point of art, it cannot be denied that Shakspeare has sometimes 
hurried over the latter part of his dramas, and cut, with violence and 
improbability, the Gordian knot of an intrigue which he had not 
time or perhaps patience to untie ; but this defect is principally 
observable in those plays which internal evidence induces us to assign 
to the early period of his career. In many of the greatest works 
the dramatic complexity is as skilfully and completely resolved as the 
catastrophe is moi'ally complete. What, for example, can be more 
complete than the resolution of the fable in 'Lear' and in 'Othello'? 
The latter play, indeed, may be considered as a miracle of consum- 
mate constructive skill. There is not a scene, a speech, a line, which 
does not evidently bear upon and contribute to the catastrophe ; and 
that catastrophe is in the highest degree terrible and pathetic. 

Of all the thousand errors prevalent respecting the genius and the 
works of Shakspeare, and which the industry of a respectful and 
affectionate and loving criticism has not yet entirely dispelled, perhaps 
the most fatal was a spirit of patronizing admiration and wondering 
approval, which seemed to consider his dramas as astonishing pro- 
ductions of an irregular and barbarous genius. Let it be to the 
eternal honour of Coleridge that he was the first to lead the way to 
a truer and more just appreciation of the poet of humanity, and to 
have shown his countrymen that the criticism which considered these 
wonderful creations as the work of accidental genius (absurd and 
contradictory as must appear such a collocation of the two words) 
was the mere dream of pedantry and ignorance. "What V he says 
with a noble indignation, "does Grod perform miracles in sport?'' Is 
it conceivable that these wonders of intellect and imagination — these 
worlds of fancy, redolent of beauty, of life, of a glorified reality — 

"All that is most beauteous — imaged there 

In happier beauty; more pellucid streams, 
An ampler ether, a diviner air. 

And fields invested with purpureal gleams ; 
Climes which the sun, who sheds the brightest day 

Earth knows, is all unworthy to survey" — 

that all this subtle music of humanity, all this deep knowledge of 
the human heart — its passions, its powers, its aspirations — could bo 
the result of accident — of a happy genius in an age of barbarism ? 
• — that the woolstapler's son of Stratford could have created, by acci- 



CHAP. VII.] THE SHAKSPEARIAN DRAMATISTS. 



127 



dent, Juliet and Cordelia, Imogen and Miranda, Katherine and Cleo- 
patra, Perdita and Ophelia ? — that it was accident which reflected on 
the never-dying page of the dramatist of the Blackfriars the thun- 
derous gloom of Lear's moral atmosphere, the fairy-peopled sunshine 
of Prosperous enchanted isle, the moonlit stillness of the garden at 
Belmont, the merry lamp-light of the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, 
; or the warm English daylight of Windsor ? No ! such an opinion 
would be no less absurd (we had almost written blasphemous) than 
the sceptic's fancy that this earth was the result of blind chance and 
a fortuitous concourse of atoms. 

From the works of Shakspeare may be gleaned a complete collec- 
tion of precepts adapted to every condition of life and to every con- 
ceivable circumstance of human affairs. The wisest and best of 
mankind have gone to him for maxims of wisdom and of goodness 
— maxims expressed with the artlessness and simplicity of a casual 
remark, but pregnant with the thought of consummate experience 
and penetration : from him the courtier has learned grace, the moral- 
ist prudence, the theologian divinity, the soldier enterprise, the king 
royalty : his wit is unbounded, his passion inimitable, his splendour 
unequalled ; and over all these varied glories he has thrown a halo 
of human sympathy no less tender than his genius was immeasurable 
and profound, a light reflected from the most gentle, generous, lov- 
ing spirit that ever glowed within a human heart : the consummate 
union of the Beautiful and the Grood. 



CHAPTER YII. 

|tHE SHAKSPEARIAN DRAMATISTsTj 

BenJonson: The Humours — His Roman Plays— Comedies— Plots. Beau- 
mont and Fletcher — Massinger — Chapman — Dekker — Webster — Middleton 
— Marston — Ford — Shirley. 

"We now come to a galaxy of great names, whose splendour, albeit 
inferior to the unmatched efi"ulgence of Shakspeare's genius, yet con- 
spires to glorify the reigns of Elizabeth and James. The literary 
triumphs of this wonderful epoch are principally confined to the 
drama, which " heaven of invention" was, to use the beautiful ex- 
pression of one of these playwrights, " studded as a frosty night with 
stars;" and deeply indeed do we regret that our space will only per- 
mit us to give a very short and cursory notice of the individual 
members of this admirable class of writers — 

" those shining stars, that run 
Their glorious course round Shakspeare's golden sun." 



128 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VII. 



The first of these illustrious dramatists whom we shall notice is 
Een Jonson, a mighty and solid genius, whose plays bear an impress 
of majestic art and slow but powerful elaboration, distinguishing them 
from the careless ease and unpremeditated abundance so strongly 
characterising the drama of this period. He was born in 1574, ten 
years after Shakspeare, who honoured him with his close friendship 
and well-merited protection. He was undoubtedly one of the most 
learned men of this or indeed any age of English literature ; and he 
brought to his dramatic task a much greater supply of scholastic 
knowledge than was possessed by any of his contemporaries. Edu- 
cated at Cambridge, he adopted the stage as his profession when 
about twenty years of age, and when he had already acquired very 
extensive knowledge of the world, and experience in various scenes 
of "many-coloured life," in the university and even in the camp: 
for Ben had served with distinguished bravery in the wars of the 
Low Countries. As an actor he is reported to have completely 
failed, but it was at this period that he began to exhibit, in the lite- 
rary department of his profession, that genius which has placed his 
name next to that of the greatest. Like all his contemporary drama- 
tists, J onson began by repairing and adapting older plays, and his 
name is connected, like that of so many of the dramatic dehutans of 
this period, with several of such recastings ; for example, with that 
of ' Hieronyrao,' &c. It was not till 1596 that he produced his first 
original piece, the admirable comedy of ' Every Man in his Humour,' 
which gave infallible proof that a new and powerful genius had risen on 
the English stage. This comedy was brought out (considerably altered 
from its first sketch,) at the Globe theatre, in 1598, and in some degree, 
it is related, through the instrumentality of Shakspeare, who acted a 
principal part in the piece. It was soon evident that Jonson had cut 
out for himself a new path in the drama ; and he rapidly attained, and 
steadily preserved, the highest reputation for genius and for art. In 
fact, Jonson, during the whole of his life, occupied a position at 
the very head of the dramatists of the day— a position perhaps even 
superior to that of Shakspeare himself. Nor is this wonderful. 
The qualities of Jonson's peculiar excellence were more obvious and 
appreciable than the delicate and, as it were, coy merits of the great 
poet, whose works, possessing all the depth and universality of nature, 
require no less study, subtlety, and discrimination in him who would 
understand them as they deserve. All, on the contrary, could admire 
Jonson's wonderful knowledge of real life, his vast and accurate ob- 
servation of human vices and follies^ his somewhat rough but 
straightforward and vigorous delineations of character, and the epi- 
grammatic condensation of a strong and masculine style, armed with 
all the weapons of classic rhetoric, and decorated with the splendours 
of unequalled learning. Jonson was, in short, a great comic drama- 
tist; and it will be found that the chief excellence even of his two 



CHAP. VII.] BEN JONSON : HIS CHARACTERS. 



129 



tragedies is less of a tragic than of a comic kind, and that they 
please us rather by their admirable delineations of manners than by 
those pictures of passion and sentiment which it is the legitimate 
province of tragedy to present. The peculiar excellence ef this great 
writer lay in the representation of the weaknesses and affectations of 
common and domestic life — in the delineation of what were then 
called the "humours/^ a word which may be explained to mean 
those innate and peculiar distortions and deformities of moral physi- 
ognomy with which nature has stamped the characters of indi\dduals 
in every highly artificial and civilized state of society, and which are 
afterwards exaggerated and rendered inveterate by vanity and affec- 
tation. In delineating these obliquities of character Jonsou proceeded 
philosophically, we may even say scientifically : he appears to have 
carefally and minutely anatomised the follies and foibles of humanity, 
and to have accumulated in his comic or satiric pictures (for his comedy 
is of the satiric kind) every trait and little stroke of the particular 
folly in question, with a most consummate skill and industry ; fre- 
quently concentrating in one character not only all the moral pheno- 
mena which his own vast and accurate observation could supply, aided 
as that was by a systematic and elaborate classification, but often ex- 
hausting all the touches left us in the moral portraits of the historians 
and satirists of antiquity. 

His Roman plays, indeed, 'Catiline' and ^Sejanus,' the two tra- 
gedies of which we have spoken, and the comedy of 'Poetaster,' 
may be considered as absolute mosaics of language, of traits of cha- 
racter and points of history, extracted from the works of Tacitus, of 
Sallust, of Juvenal, of Horace — in short, the quintessence of Roman 
literature. Yet such is Jonson's skill, and so perfect a harmony was 
there between the vigorous, majestic, Roman character of his own 
mind, and the tone of the literature which he studied so profoundly, 
that this mosaic, though composed of an infinite number of distinct 
particles, has the most absolute unity of efi"ect. Nay, more, he has 
done the same thing in those comedies which have for their subject 
modern domestic life and modern manners ; and he has managed to 
introduce, in the portraiture of the ludicrous and contemptible per- 
sons of English citizen life in the sixteenth century, the strokes of 
humour and character taken from the delineations of Roman manners 
executed by the great satiric artists of the time of the C^sars. This 
is undoubtedly a point of consummate skill in rendering available the 
stores of a species of learning which we should at first sight consider 
rather as an encumbrance than a useful instrument ; but it arises also 
in some measure from that classical tone of character which we have 
attributed to Jonson : he was, indeed, 

"More an antique Roman than a Dane." 
It must, however, be confessed that Jonson's characters are some- 



130 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VII. 



times too elaborate, too scientificj and overloaded with details which, 
though individually true and comic, are never found concentrated in 
one person. He has therefore been accused, and not unjustly, of 
painting, not men and women, but impersonations of their leading 
follies and vices. And in this respect a parallel between J onson and 
Shakspeare would be exceedingly unfavourable to the former. Both 
have given us admirable portraits, for example, of braggarts, of cox- 
combs, and of fools; but while Shakspeare's are real men and women, 
with real individuality of their own, but in whom the bragging, the 
coxcombry, the folly happen to be remarkable features, the comic 
characters of Jonson cannot be separated from the predominant folly 
ridiculed. We might conceive Parolles becoming a modest and sen- 
sible man, Osric a plain-spoken and downright citizen, and Slender 
or Aguecheek transformed by some miracle into reasonable beings, 
and something of them would remain ; but imagine Bobadil cured 
of his boasting. Sir Fastidious of his courtly puppyism, or the exqui- 
site Master Stephen of his imbecility, and nothing would be left 
behind. 

In the construction of his plots Jonson is immeasurably superior 
to all the other dramatists of the period. Naturally haughty and 
confident in his own genius, and entertaining, too, a much higher 
opinion than was common at the time of the gravity and importance 
of the dramatist's office, he scorned to found his plays upon the sub- 
structure of the Italian novelist or the legends of Middle Age history; 
and consequently we are never offended in his dramas with that im- 
probability of incident, inconsistency of character, hurried and im- 
perfect development, which is the principal structural defect of most 
of the dramatic works of this period — a defect, indeed, from which 
Shakspeare's productions are by no means free. His plots Jonson 
always invented himself ; and some of them are perfect models of 
complicated yet natural intrigue. It has been justly said that the 
comedy of the ' Silent Woman,^ of the 'Alchemist,' of ' Yolpone,' 
are inimitable as series of incidents, natural, yet interesting, gradually 
and necessarily converging to a catastrophe at once probable and un- 
expected. 

The language of this great dramatist is in the highest degree 
vigorous, picturesque, and lively : it possesses, it is true, little or 
none of that sweet and flowing harmony, that living and transparent 
grace, which makes the golden verses of our Shakspeare absolutely 
superior to the far-famed diction of the Glreek poets ; but it is an 
admirably strong and fl.exible medium for his acute and masterly ex- 
hibition of character; and though in general not much elevated above 
the level of weighty and powerful prose, sometimes rises to a consi- 
derable pitch of rhetorical splendour. It must be confessed that 
Jonson wants that deep sympathy with human nature which is the 
true source of grace of language, as it is of tenderness of thought ; 



CHAP. VII.] 



BEN jonson: his comedies. 



131 



but there is often to be found in him a kind of gallant bravery of 
language, a splendour of imagery, recalling to us the dusky glow of 
his great prototype Juvenal^ with whose genius the literary character 
of Jonson has many points of resemblance. Both writers describe 
the follies of their kind in a contemptuous and sarcastic spirit, and 
their crimes with a powerful but somewhat too declamatory invective; 
and both appeared to have less sympathy with virtue than detestation 
for vice : they were both, too, inclined to treat with indifference, if 
not with contempt, the virtues and graces of the female character — 
a sure sign of hardness of mind. Jonson's two Roman plays, ' Cati- 
line' and ' Sejanus,' are of course founded on the history, the former 
of Sallust, and the latter of Tacitus. Though presenting a noble 
and impressive copy of the terrible outlines of their subject, it may 
be objected that the principal characters in each are so unmixedly 
hateful or contemptible, that they are unfit for the purposes of the 
tragic dramatist. The senate scene in the latter, and the character 
of Tiberius, are very grandly conceived, and the assembly of conspi- 
rators in ' Catiline,' together with the description of the battle and 
the death of the hero, related by Petreius, are among the finest de- 
clamatory passages in English poetry. These two dramas are in 
verse. 

Of the comedies the finest, in point of richness of character, are 
^ Every Man in his Humour,' the ' Alchemist' (the scenes of which 
are in London), and ' Yolpone.' In the first the characters are 
numerous and admirably delineated ; the interest of the second rests 
upon the jovial villany and cunning sensuality of the hero; and the 
third contains some richly-contrasted touches of vulgar knavery and 
self-deluding expectation, wrought up with astonishing vivacity. We 
have already spoken of the excellence of plot which characterises 
the ' Silent Woman,' though the chief personage is a character so 
rare as to be, if not impossible, at least so improbable that nothing 
but its exquisite humour can reconcile us to it. 'Bartholomew 
Fair' is full of satire and animation, but would have little interest 
for a reader of the present time, being a satire upon the Puritans ; 
and of the other pieces some are merely local and temporary attacks 
on individuals, as the ' Poetaster,' ' Cynthia's Revels,' and the ' Tale 
of a Tub,' while others are generally considered inferior in merit : 
we may instance the ' Magnetic Lady,' the ' Staple of News,' and 
the 'New Inn.^ The comedies are written, some entirely in prose, 
some in mingled prose and verse. It would be unjust not to state 
that, though the above remarks will be found to apply generally to 
Jonson, he has occasionally attained to a high degree of fanciful 
elegance of language and a singular delicacy of harmony. Many 
passages may be cited, particularly from his Masques, his unfinished 
pastoral comedy of the ' Sad Shepherd,' — a most exquisite fragment 



132 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VII. 



— and all his songs, which have seldom been equalled for flowing 
elegance. 

In spite, therefore, of his faults, both as a man and as an author 
— his arrogance, his intemperance, his sarcastic and sometimes coarse 
humour, his pedantry and his pride — we must ever hold him to have 
been a great and a good man ; grateful, generous, valiant, free-spoken, 
with something of the old Roman spirit in him, a mighty artist, and 
a man of a gigantic and cultivated genius ; and we may reverently 
echo the beautiful words of the epitaph which long remained inscribed 
upon his grave — 

" O rare Ben Jonson !" 

He died, in poverty, in 1687, and was buried, in a vertical position, 
in Westminster Abbey. 

There is a far stronger resemblance between the leading features 
of Shakspeare's dramatic manner and that of the two illustrious 
authors of whom it is now our delightful duty to speak — Beaumont 
and Fletcher, the twin stars of the English literary sky. These two 
men, each of distinguished birth and considerable fortune, and bound 
by the closest ties of friendship, present the rare and admirable 
picture of a pair of friends, uniting, during a long period of author- 
ship, their powers in the joint production of a multitude of admirable 
works, in which the respective excellences of each were so intimately 
mingled, that it is almost impossible to trace the pen of either sepa- 
rately from that of the other. 

" They still have slept together, 
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together ; 
And wheresoe'er they went, like Juno's swans, 
Still they went coupled and inseparable." 

And there are no works in the whole range of literature which give 
such noble pictures of the friendship of elevated and generous spirits 
as the twin-born dramas of these illustrious fellow-labourers. 

They wrote under the immediate influence of the Shakspearian 
manner, and were obviously imitators of the great poet — not servile 
copyists, but free and enlightened followers. They were exceedingly 
prolific as authors, the editions of their works consisting of fifty-two 
pieces, the greater part of which were composed in partnership. 
This association was only dissolved by the death of Beaumont, who 
died, before he had completed his thirtieth year, in March, 1615; 
his companion Fletcher surviving him till 1625, when he died in the 
great plague, ten years after his brother dramatist, than whom he 
was ten years older. They appear, as we have said, to have set 
Shakspeare before them as their model, not however in his vaster 
and completer developments of tragic passion, or in his deep-search- 
ing analysis of character, nor even in his rich and genial creations 
of humour ; but rather that phase of his dramatic art in which he 



CHAP. VII.] 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 



133 



has ventured into the airy world of graceful and imaginative fiction : 
not, in short, such characters as Macbeth, Othello, FalstalF, Hamlet, 
or Shylock, but rather the persons which people the fairy isle of 
Prospero, or the sunny gardens of Illyria. They are in particular 
admired for the fresh, and vigorous, and courtly pictures they have 
given of youthful generosity and friendship, and for the occasionally 
happy portraits of love and innocent confidence ; nor must we forget 
the many admirable figures of loyal and military devotion to be found 
in many exquisite characters of war-worn veterans. 

In their plots they are even more careless and irregular than 
Shakspeare ; never scrupling to commit the most outrageous offences 
against consistency of character and probability of event, and ap- 
pearing to rely mainly on their skill in presenting striking and pic- 
turesque situation, and their mastery over every varied tone of 
majestic, airy, and animated dialogue. 

"There are," says Campbell, speaking of these two dramatists, 
"such extremes of grossness and magnificence in their dramas, so 
much sweetness and beauty interspersed with views of nature either 
falsely romantic or vulgar beyond reality ; there is so much to ani- 
mate and amuse us, and yet so much that we would willingly over- 
look, that I cannot help comparing the contrasted impressions which 
they make to those which we receive from visiting some great and 
ancient city, picturesquely but irregularly built, glittering with spires 
and surrounded by gardens, hut exhibiting in many quarters the 
lanes and hovels of wretchedness. They have scenes of wealthy 
and high life, which remind us of courts and palaces frequented by 
elegant females and high-spirited gallants, whilst their noble old 
martial characters, with Caractacus in the midst of them^ may inspire 
us with the same sort of regard which we pay to the rough-hewn 
magnificence of an ancient fortress. 

The prevailing vices of these great but unequal writers are, first, 
the shocking occasional indelicacy and coarseness of their language, 
and, secondly, the frequent inconsistency of their characters. With 
respect to the former, it is no excuse to say that it is partly to be 
attributed to the custom of the female parts being at this period 
universally represented by boys; nor is it much palliation to consider 
this licentiousness of speech as the vice of the times. It is true that 
the charge of indecency may safely be maintained a^inst nearly all 
the writers of this wonderful period, and we know that the stage 
has a peculiar tendency to fall into this error; but Shakspeare has 
shown us that it is very possible to avoid this species of pruriency, 
and to portray the female character not in its warmth only and its 
tenderness, but also in its purity. The most singular thing is, that 
many of the more indelicate scenes, and much of the coarsest lan- 
guage in Beaumont and Fletcher, will be found to have been com- 
posed with the express purpose of exhibiting the virtue and purity 



134 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VH. 



of their heroines. It cannot however he denied that it is hut an 
inartificial and dangerous mode of exalting the triumph of virtue, to 
represent it as in immediate contact with the coarsest and most 
debasing vice. Nor is that Juvenalian manner of satire either to be 
imitated or approved which consists in elaborate description of im- 
morality, however strong may be the tone of its invective, and 
however elevated the height from which its thunders may be hurled. 
The precepts of good sense will coincide with the Duke's answer to 
Jaques in ^ As You Like It : ' — 

"Jac. Give me leave 

To speak ray raind, and T will through and through 
Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, 
If they will patiently receive my medicine. 

Duke. Fie on thee ! I can tell what thou wouldst do, — 
Most mischievous foul sin in chiding sin; 
For thou thyself hast been a libertine ; 
And all the embossed sores and headed evils, 
That thou with licence of free foot hast caught, 
Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world."- 

The other main vice of Beaumont and Fletcher is the extraordi- 
nary and monstrous inconsistency of the characters. Nothing is 
more common in their plays than to see a valiant and modest youth 
become, in the course of a few scenes, and without any cause or 
reason, a coward and a braggart ; and the devoted and loyal subject 
of the first act metamorphosed into the traitor and assassin of the 
third; the pure and high-born princess transformed into the coarse 
and profligate virago. In order to exalt some particular virtue in 
their heroes, these writers sometimes represent them as enduring in- 
dignities and undergoing trials to which no human being would 
submit, or the very submission to which would render impossible 
the existence of the virtue in question. 

In spite of the general truth of the foregoing remarks, our readers 
must not be surprised to learn that the plays of these dramatists 
abound in many exquisite portraits of female heroism and magnani- 
mity. Indeed, the principal defect of their female characters (at 
least of those which are really striking and attractive) is that they 
seem to be conceived in a spirit too romantic and ideal, and are, as 
Campbell well expresses it, '^rather fine idols of the imagination 
than probable types of nature but it would be unjust to forget 
that the polluted stream of such base and monstrous conceptions as 
' The Island Princess,' and ^ Cupid's Revenge/ flows from the same 
source as the pure and sparkling fountain of Philaster,' of ' The 
Double Marriage,' of ' The Maid's Tragedy,' and of ' Bonduca.' 
We do not mean that even these latter works are free from objectionable 
passages ; but what is revolting might easily be cleared away, and 
would leave much to elevate the fancy and to purify the heart. 
Beaumont and Fletcher have been justly praised by all the critics, 



CHAP. VII.] 



MASSINGER CHAPMAN. 



135 



from Dryden downwards, for their beautiful delineations of youthful 
friendship, and for the ease, grace, and vivacity which distinguish 
their dialogue, particularly such dialogue as takes place between 
high-spirited and gallant young men. In this they probably drew 
from themselves. 

Their comic characters, though generally very unnatural, and 
devoid of that rich internal humour — that luce di dentro, as the 
Italian artists phrase it — which makes Shakespeare's so admirable, 
are written with a droll extravagance and fearless verve which seldom 
fails to excite a laugh. The Lieutenant, who has drunk a love-potion, 
and is so absurdly enamoured of the old king ; Piniero, Cacafogo, 
La Writ, the hungry priest and his clerk, and a multitude of others, 
though fantastic and grotesque caricatures, are yet caricature executed 
with much freedom and spirit. 

According to the ancient tradition, Beaumont is said to have pos- 
sessed more judgment and elevation, Fletcher more invention and 
vivacity. How far this can be proved by comparing those works 
written conjointly by the two illustrious fellow-labourers, with those 
composed after Beaumont's death by his surviving friend, it is diffi- 
cult to determine. We think it may be safely concluded that Beau^ 
mont possessed more markedly the tragic spirit, Fletcher the vis 
comica — one of the best of the comic pieces being Fletcher's ' Bule 
a W^ife and have a Wife.' 

We must now pass rapidly over a number of mighty yet less 
illustrious names, which in any other age, and in any other country, 
would have been secure of immortality. The works of these drama- 
tists, so admired in their own day, and possessing all the qualities 
likely to render them permanently popular, have been long condemned 
(that is, during the whole period intervening between the civil wars 
and the beginning of the present century) to an obscurity and 
neglect incredible to those who are acquainted with their various 
and striking merits, and inexplicable to all who are ignorant of the 
capricious tyranny of popular taste. 

Disinterred from the dust and cobwebs of two hundred years, and 
brought to light by commentators and philologists eager to explain 
the works of the greatest among their glorious army, these authors 
have gradually attracted the attention of the general reader in 
England, and may now be considered as finally and solidly established 
in popular and national admiration. Strange ! that the very genius 
which eclipsed them all, and threw them as if for ever into the 
abyss of neglect and "the portion of weeds and out-worn faces," 
should have been, in an after age, the indirect means of restoring to 
them that heritage of glory which they appeared to have irredeemably 
forfeited ! 

The next name to which we shall invite the reader's attention is 
that of Philip Massinger, a man who passed his life in struggling 



136 



OUTLINES 0]? GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VII. 



witli poverty and distress. He has left us a considerable number of 
dramas, the greatest part of them in that mixed manner so general 
at this time, in -which the passions exhibited are of a grave and 
elevated character, the language rich and ornamented, and yet the 
persons and events hardly to be called heroic. Of these works the 
finest are ' The City Madam/ ' The Great Duke of Florence,' ' The 
Bondman,' ' The Virgin Martyr,' and ' A New Way to Pay Old 
Debts.' In the first and last mentioned of these plays the author 
has given a most striking and powerful picture of oppression, and 
the triumphant self-glorifying of ill-got wealth. The character of 
Sir Giles Overreach in the one, and that of Luke in the other, are 
masterpieces. In expressing the dignity of virtue, and in showing 
greatness of soul rising superior to circumstance and fate, Massinger 
exhibits so peculiar a vigour and felicity, that it is impossible not to 
conceive such delineations (in which the poet delighted) to be a 
reflection of his own proud and patient soul, and perhaps, too, but 
too true a memorial of " the rich man's scorn, the proud man's con- 
tumely," which he had himself undergone. In the tender and 
pathetic, Massinger had no mastery ; in the moral gloom of guilt, in 
the crowded agony of remorse, in painting the storm and tempest of 
the moral atmosphere, he is undoubtedly a great and mighty artist ; 
and in expressing the sentiments of dignity and virtue, cast down 
but not humbled by undeserved misfortune, he is almost unequalled. 
His versification, though never flowingly harmonious, is skilful and 
learned, an appropriate vehicle for the elevation of the sentiments ; 
and in the description of rich and splendid scenes he is peculiarly 
powerful and impressive. The soliloquy of Luke in his brother's 
counting-house, when the long-despised " poor relation" suddenly 
finds himself the possessor of enormous wealth, and the gorgeous 
description in which he enumerates the gold and jewels and " skins 
of parchment" in which his newly-acquired power is condensed, and 
his long-desired vengeance on his oppressors — all this is conceived 
in a dramatic spirit of the highest order. Massinger was born about 
1584, and died in great poverty in March, 1640. 

In reviewing the long succession of squalid lives and early and 
obscure deaths which composes the biography of the dramatic school 
of Elizabeth, it is very gratifying to meet with an illustrious poet 
whose existence was as tranquil as his productions were excellent. 
This was George Chapman, one of the most learned men of his age, 
and the author of the finest translation of Homer in the English 
language. Deeply imbued with the spirit of Greek poetry, and bap- 
tised, so to say, in the fire of its earliest and most heroic inspirations 
— in the works of Homer and of ^schylus — Chapman has infused 
into his dramas, and particularly into those written on classical sub- 
jects, far more of the true Greek spirit than will be found in a 
thousand of those pale and frigid centos which go under the name of 



CHAP. VII.] 



DEKKAR — WEBSTER. 



137 



regular classical tragedies ; and would be an unanswerable reply to 
the prejudices and ignorance of those foreign critics who so glibly 
accuse the British drama of irregularity and barbarism. The life 
of this great and learned man was worthy of his genius, " preserv- 
ing/^ to use the words of Oldys, "in his conduct, the true dignity 
of poesy, which he compared to the flower of the sun, that disdains 
to open its leaves to the eye of a smoking taper.^^ He died, at the 
age of seventy-seven, in 1634. 

We will pass over Dekkar, a most prolific and multifarious dra- 
matist, whose productions, however, are difficult to examine and ap- 
preciate, from his having generally written in partnership with other 
playwrights. He appears to have been by no means destitute of 
imagination, of pathos, or of humour; though his genius has always 
appeared to us rather lyric than dramatic. He was celebrated in his 
own day for his literary warfare with Jonson, whom he attacked in 
his ' Satiro-mastix;' his finest passages are marked by greats felicity 
of idea, and a delicate music' of expression. He died in 1638. 

John Webster, a mighty and funereal genius, is the next author 
we shall mention. We can compare his mind to nothing so well as 
to some old Gothic cathedral, with its arches soaring heaven-ward, 
but carved with monsters and angels, with saints and fiends, in gro- 
tesque confusion. Gleams of sunlight fall here and there, it is true, 
through the huge window, but they are coloured with the sombre 
dyes of painted glass, bearing records of human pride and human 
nothingness, and they fall in long slanting columns, twinkling silently 
with motes and dusty splendour, upon the tombs of the mighty; 
lighting dimly up now the armour of a recumbent Templar or the 
ruif of some dead beauty, and now feebly losing themselves amid the 
ragged coffins and scutcheons in the vaults below. His fancy was 
wild and powerful, but gloomy and monstrous, dwelling ever on the 
vanities of earthly glory, on the nothingness of pomp, not without 
many terrible hints at the emptiness of our trust, and many bold 
questionings of human hopes of a hereafter. " His phantasms ap- 
pear often, and do frequent cemeteries, charnel-houses, and churches, 
where the devil, like an insolenl^'-champion, beholds with pride the 
spoils and trophies of his victory over Adam.'' Death is indeed his 
Muse ; not the rose-crowned deity of the ancients, the brother of 
sleep, the bringer of repose, the winged genius with the extinguished 
torch, but the hideous skeleton of the monkish imagination, the 
*'grim anatomy/' with his crawling blood-worms, and all the loath- 
some horrors of physical corruption. 

His most striking plays are 'The White Devil,' 'The Duchess of 
Malfy' (Amalfi), 'Guise, or the Massacre of France,' and 'The 
Devil's Law-case.' In the second of these works, a tragedy in which 
pity and horror are carried to an intense and almost unendurable 
pitch, the death of the innocent and beautiful heroine is most power- 



138 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VII. 



fully conceived : his simple, direct, straightforward pathos is in the 
highest degree tragic and affecting ; but his plots are totally extra- 
vagant, crowded with supernumerary horrors; and if he is occa- 
sionally touching and graceful, such passages resemble less the growth 
of a rich and generous soil, than the pale flowers which sometimes 
bloom amid the rank and obscene herbage of a crowded burial-ground, 
springing from fat corruption and watered with hopeless tears. This 
strange and powerful genius was contemporary in his life and death, 
as it is supposed, with Dekkar, and these two dramatists wrote many 
pieces together. 

Our space will only allow us to make a brief allusion to Middleton 
and Marston, the former of whom is remarkable for the use he has 
made in one of his plays of the popular witch or sorceress of his 
country's superstition, a circumstance to which some critics have 
attributed the original conception of Shakspeare's wondrous super- 
natural machinery in Macbeth. Middleton's witches are, however, 
nothing more than the traditional mischievous old women, described, 
it is true, with great vigour and spirit, while those of the greater 
bard are, as Charles Lamb finely says, "foul anomalies, of whom we 
know not whence they are sprung, nor whether they have beginning 
or ending. As they are without human passions, so they seem to 
be without human relations. They come with thunder and light- 
ning, and vanish to airy music. This is all we know of them. 
Except Hecate, they have no names ; which heightens their myste- 
riousness.'^ 

Marston is chiefly remarkable for a fine tone of moral satire : some 
of his invectives against vice and folly are grand abundant outpour- 
ings of Juvenalian eloquence, not without some of Juvenal's grim 
mirth and grave pleasantry. 

We must confess that our favourite among the minor Elizabethan 
dramatists — that is, after Shakspeare, Jonson, and Fletcher — is John 
Ford. Of a melancholy and pensive character — witness the strong- 
portrait sketched by a contemporary hand — 

^ " Deep in a dump John Ford alone was got 
With folded arms and melancholy hat !" — 

sufficiently learned to enrich his scenes with many beautiful images 
borrowed from the ancients; possessing an ear for the softest har- 
mony, and a heart peculiarly sensitive to pure and elevated emotion, 
this dramatist has depicted the passions, and particularly the love, 
of youth and innocence, with a tenderness and force which almost 
equals Shakspeare himself Ford's instrument is of no great com- 
pass, but its tones are unmatched for softness, and he makes it " dis- 
course most eloquent music." His finest plays are ' The Lover's 
Melancholy,' ' The Brother and Sister,' ' Love's Sacrifice,' ' The 
Fancies; Chaste and Noble/ and, above all, the admirable tragedy 



CHAP. VII.] 



FORD — SHIELEY. 



139 



of ' The Broken Heart.^ Do not these exquisite and fanciful titles 
seem to give earnest of purity, grace, tenderness, chivalrous love, and 
patient suffering ? And the reader will not be disappointed, We 
do not mean to say that Ford is not sometimes coarse, sometimes 
licentious, and sometimes extravagant. Unfortunately the audiences 
of that age recjuired an intermixture of comic scenes, even in the 
♦most serious dramas; and Ford's genius was the very reverse of 
comic. With no humour in his soul, he seems, when trying to write 
his comic scenes (which are, with few exceptions, base and contempt- 
ible in the extreme), to have determined by a violent effort to re- 
nounce his own refined and modest character, and like a bashful man, 
who generally becomes impudent when he attempts to conquer his 
natural infirmity, he rushes at once from the airiest and most courtly 
elegance to the vilest and meanest buffoonery. But in his true 
sphere, what dramatist was ever greater ? What author has ever 
painted with a more delicate and reverent hand the innocence, the 
timid ardour of youthful passion — 

" le speranze, gl' affetti, 
La data fe, le tenevezze ; i primi 
Sgambievoli sospiri, i primi sguardi"? — 

and who has ever approached him in the representation of the 
patience and self-denial of that noblest and most unselfish of pas- 
sions — of the undying constancy of breaking hearts — in all the 
more divine and ethereal aspects of the sentiment? In the last 
play which we have spoken of, the pathos is absolutely carried so far 
that it oversteps the true limits of dramatic sufferance ; nay, almost 
trangresses the bounds of human endurance. How confident must 
he have been in his own mastery over every manifestation of the 
passion which he has so delighted to portray, to have ventured in 
one drama two such characters as Penthea and Calantha ! Ford has 
also never failed to interest us in a class of personages which it is 
very difficult to render attractive — the characters of hopeless yet 
unrepining lovers. We need only mention Orgilus and the noble 
Malfato. 

We now come to the last of these great dramatists, James Shirley. 
He was a man of learned education, who was at first destined for the 
clerical profession, but, disappointed in his hopes, took refuge in 
those two inevitable asylums of indigent erudition, first the school^ 
and afterwards the theatre. His life was full of adventure, for it 
extended over a most busy period, namely from 1596 till after the 
Restoration. He had indeed passed through many vicissitudes, for 
he had fought in the civil wars on the royalist side; and his name 
forms the connecting link between the two periods of dramatic art, 
so widely different^ one of which is typified in Shakspeare, and the 
other in Congreve. His works are praised for the elegance, nature, 
good sense, and sprightliness of their comic language ; for the purity 



140 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VIII. 



of the characters, particularly the female ones ; and for the ease and 
animation of his plots. He has not much pathos, it is true, nor 
much knowledge of the heart ; but there are few dramatists whose 
works give a more agreeable and unforced transcript of the ordinary 
scenes of life, conveyed in more graceful language. His humour, 
though not very profound, is true and fanciful, and his plays may 
always be read with pleasure, and often with profit. His best 
dramas are 'The Brothers,* 'The Lady of Pleasure/ and 'The 
G-rateful Servant.* 



CHAPTER VIIL 

THE GREAT DIVINES. 

Theological Eloquence of England and France — The Civil War — Persecution 
of the Clergy — Richard Hooker — His Life and Character — Treatise on 
Ecclesiastical Polity — Jeremy Taylor — Compared with Hooker — His Life 
— Liberty of Prophesying — His other works — The Restoration — Taylor's 
Sermons — Hallam's Criticism — Taylor's Digressive Style — Isaac Barrow — 
His immense Acquirements — Compared to Pascal — The English Univer- 
sities. 

In the department of Christian philosophy, and particularly in 
that subdivision of theological literature which embraces the eloquence 
of the pulpit, England has generally been considered inferior to many 
other European nations, and to France in particular. So splendid 
indeed are the triumphs of reasoning and of eloquence which are 
recalled to the remembrance of every cultivated mind at the mention 
of such illustrious names as Pascal, as Bossuet, as Bourdaloue, that 
the general reader (above all, the Continental one) is apt to doubt 
whether the Church of England has been adorned by any intellects 
comparable to these bright and shining lamps of Catholicism. We 
hope that we shall not be considered presumptuous if we endeavour 
to show that Great Britain does possess monuments of Christian 
eloquence equal or at least not inferior to the immortal productions 
of these great men, and, at the same time, if we attempt to explain 
how it has happened that the triumphs of English divinity are not 
so generally known and appreciated as those of the great French 
theologians. This latter circumstance will be found to proceed not 
only from the much more universal study throughout Europe of the 
French language as compared to the English (a partiality which, it 
must be confessed, is now daily wearing away), but also in some 
measure from the points of difference in many matters of religious 



CHAP. VIII.] THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 



141 



belief and ecclesiastical discipline existing between the Anglican 
C Lurch and that of Rome. 

There is, in short, a much greater apparent accordance, in these 
points, between the opinions of most of the Continental Churches 
and those of Rome, than exists between Romanism and the Church 
of England. Add to this, too, the more imposing and dazzling 
character of the French style, particularly that of the French pulpit, 
at the splendid epoch so brilliantly adorned by these admirable pro- 
ductions, and we shall not be at a loss to attribute to its real cause 
the comparative neglect experienced by the works of Hooker, Taylor, 
Barrow, South, and Stillingfleet. 

In instituting a general comparison between the productions of 
the French and English intellect, few persons have failed to remark 
one very striking point of dissimilitude, if not even of contrast ; and 
this is, that the former will be found to possess their chief and 
characteristic beauties externally, while those of the latter are not 
to be perceived or appreciated without a greater degree of study and 
examination. We do not mean, by the use of the word " external," 
in any way to imply that the productions of French genius do not 
possess merits as real and as solid as those which adorn any literature 
in the world; we wish to express that those merits lie nearer to the 
surface and are brought more prominently forward in the great 
trophies of French intellect than in those of the British mind. 
"Whether we examine the drama of the two countries, their eloquence 
or their poetry, we shall almost invariably find that, while the merits 
and peculiar graces of the Grallic intellect are conspicuously and pro- 
minently placed as it were in the foreground of the picture, the 
British Muse is of a coyer and more retiring temper, and only yields 
herself to ardent and persevering pursuit — 

" With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay." 

This deep and internal character of oui* literature arises in a great 
measure from that Teutonic element which plays so important a part 
in every development of English nationality — in the literature of 
the country, in its language, in its social condition, and in its political 
institutions. The regular and beautiful forms of classical literature 
— simple, severe, intelligible as the proportions of the Grecian archi- 
tecture — which the French have generally made their models, are 
certain at the very first view to strike, to please, and to elevate ; while 
the English literature — and no portion of it more justly than the 
one now under our consideration — may rather be compared to the art- 
ful wildness, the studied irregularity of some Gothic cathedral. Its 
proportions are less obvious, its outline less distinct ; its rich and 
varied ornaments can only be understood, and its multiplicity of parts 
can only be harmonized into a beautiful and accordant whole, by the 
spectator who will pass some time and exert some patience in study- 



142 



OUTLINES or GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VIII. 



ing it, and whose eye must first overcome the mysterious gloom 
which pervades the solemn fabric. 

But these remarks will be better substantiated by a comparison of 
the great works of theologic eloquence which we are about to exam- 
ine in detail. Those qualities which we have already spoken of as 
characterising all the literary productions of the period of Queen 
Elizabeth will be found impressed upon no part of that literature 
with greater distinctness than upon this. Richness, fertility, univer- 
sality are stamped upon all the writings of this unequalled era ; and 
richness, fertility, and universality are the distinctive features of the 
style of the three great divines whom we have selected from a very 
large multitude as embodying in the highest degree the peculiar me- 
rits of their era — an era which, it is proper to remark, extended from 
the middle of Elizabeth's reign down to the period of the Restora- 
tion, and even some time beyond it. 

The innumerable discordant sects into which the nation was split 
during the Commonwealth were much more calculated to encourage 
wild speculations in doctrine and fantastical innovations in practice 
than to promote the true interests of religion and, with that narrow 
and persecuting bigotry which so strongly contrasted with their pro- 
fessions of universal toleration, the fanatics united all their efforts 
against the established Church of the country. Bitter as were their 
enmities towards one another, the thousand sects could at least find 
one point in which they were all agreed ; and this was the annihila- 
tion of a Church whose riches and dignity excited at once their envy 
and their rapacity, while the learning and virtue of its most distin- 
guished defenders must have been felt by them — bigots at once and 
fanatics as they were — as a tacit reproach upon their own blatant 
ignorance and plebeian ferocity. 

A multitude of the regular clergy were driven from their pulpits, 
and persecuted with every ingenuity that triumphant malice could 
devise: many men, venerable for their virtues and illustrious for their 
learning, were hounded like wild beasts from the tranquil retreats of 
their universities and the industrious obscurity of their parishes. 
The Church of England underwent a fierce and unrelenting ordeal, 
and, in passing through that fiery trial, showed that all the severities 
of a tyrannical and fanatic government might indeed oppress, but 
could never humiliate it. It was in imprisonment, in exile, and in 
poverty that that Church strung its nerves and strengthened itself 
for its noblest exploits ; it was when crushed beneath the armed foot 
of military fanaticism that it gave out, like the fragrant Indian tree, 
its sweetest odours of sanctity and its most precious balm of Christian 
doctrine ; and let it be recorded to the glory of these much-tried and 
illustrious victims, that when the storm of tyranny had passed away, 
and the Anglican Church was once more restored to its holy places, 
it used its victory mercifully, as it had supported its affliction pa- 



CHAP. VIII.] 



HOOKER ; HIS LIFE. 



143 



tiently. It had suffered persecution, and it had learned forgive- 
ness. 

The three great men whose works we propose to examine occupy 
a period extending between the years 1553 and 1677, or rather more 
than a century — a century filled with vicissitudes of the gravest im- 
port to the fortunes of the English Church. "We should not have 
ventured to take a view of this part of our subject embracing so long 
a period of time, and necessitating the consideration of so many, so 
various, and so important works, but from the reflection that these 
men and their productions bear one stamp and possess a singular re- 
semblance in mode of thought and tone of language ; they all belong, 
intellectually if not chronologically, to the Elizabethan era. 

The first of them in point of time is Richard Hooker, born near 
Exeter in 1553, and enabled, by the wise benevolence of the vene- 
rable Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, to study at the University of 
Oxford, where he speedily distinguished himself for his vast learning 
and industry, no less than by a simplicity and purity of character 
almost angelic. 

Having attracted the notice of Bishop Sandys, he was made tutor 
to that prelate's son, who, together with Cranmer, a descendant of 
the archbishop, enjoyed the benefit of Hooker's superintendence, and 
who ever afterwards retained for his wise an^ simple preceptor the 
warmest veneration and respect. After occupying for a short time 
the chair of Deputy Professor of Hebrew, he entered into holy 
orders, and married. This last important act of life was productive 
of so much affliction, even to his pious and gentle spirit, and was 
entered upon with a guileless simplicity so characteristic of Hooker's 
unworldly temper, that we cannot refrain from giving the anecdote 
as related by his friend and biographer Walton. Arriving wet and 
weary in London, he put up there at a house set apart for the accom- 
modation of the preachers who had to deliver the sermon at Paul's 
Cross. His hostess treated him with so much kindness that Hooker's 
gratitude induced him to accept a proposition made by her of pro- 
curing him a wife. This she accordingly did in the person of her 
own daughter, " a silly clownish woman, and withal a mere Xan- 
tippe," whom he accordingly married, and who appears to have 
inflicted upon her simple and patient husband an uninterrupted 
succession of such penance as ascetics usually exercise upon them- 
selves in the hope of recompense in a future existence. When 
visited, at a rectory in Buckinghamshire to which he was afterwards 
presented, by his old pupils Sandys and Cranmer, Hooker was found 
in the fields tending sheep and reading Horace, possibly contrasting 
the sweet pictures of rural life painted by the Yenusian bard with 
the vulgar realities which surrounded him. On returniog to the 
house the guests " received little entertainment except from the 
conversation of Hooker," who was disturbed by his wife's calling 



144 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VIII. 



bim away to rock the cradle. On their departure the next morning 
Cranmer could not refrain from expressing his sympathy with 
Hooker's domestic miseries, with his poverty and the obscurity of his 
condition. " My dear George,,^' 'replied this Christian philosopher, 
if saints have usually a double share in the miseries of this life, I, 
that am none, ought not to repine at what my wise Creator hath 
appointed for me, but labour (as indeed I do daily) to submit mine to 
his will, and possess my soul in patience and peace. ''^ Shortly after the 
event related in this touching anecdote, Hooker received the dignified 
appointment of Master of the Temple in London, a post in which 
his learning, genius, and piety were exhibited in all their brightness, 
but in which his resignation and love of peace were put to a trial 
not less severe, though certainly less humiliating, than those to which 
this heavenly-minded man was exposed in his Buckinghamshire 
rectory. He soon found himself engaged in a controversy with 
"Walter Travers, his colleague in the ministry of the Temple, an 
eloquent and able man, but professing certain opinions respecting 
church government with which Hooker could not coincide. In this 
interminable sea of discussion was now conscientiously embarked the 
mild and modest Hooker; and though the argument was conducted 
on both sides with good temper and courtesy, it embittered the exist- 
ence of our peace-loving divine, and ended in his antagonist being 
suspended from his lAiisterial functions by the authority of Arch- 
bishop Whitgift. Hooker on this occasion wrote to the prelate a 
letter imploring deliverance from " that troubled sea of noises and 
harsh discontents," an element so unfitted to the peculiar character 
of his mind and temper, and a position which prevented him from 
preceding with the great work he was now meditating, his ' Treatise 
on the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.' The letter breathes so noble 
a spirit of Christian purity, and is withal so characteristic of the 
man, that we shall, we trust, be pardoned for inserting some passages 
of it; the rather as it contains the outline and general aim of the 
work itself. 

" My Lord, — When I lost the freedom of my cell, which was 
my college, yet I found some degree of it in my quiet country par- 
sonage. But I am weary of the noise and oppositions of this place; 
and, indeed, Grod and nature did not intend me for contentions, but 
for study and quietness. And, my Lord, my particular contests here 
with Mr. Travers have proved the more unpleasant to me because I 
believe him to be a good man ; and upon that belief hath occasioned 
me to examine my conscience touching his opinions. And to satisfy 
that, I have consulted the Holy Scriptures and other laws both 

human and divine And in this examination I have not 

only satisfied myself, but have begun a treatise, in which I intend 
the satisfaction of others, by a demonstration of the reasonableness 
of our laws of ecclesiastical polity. But, my Lord, I shall never be 



CHAP. Vni.] HOOICER : ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY. 145 

able to finisli what I have begun, unless I be removed into some 
quiet parsonage, where I may see God's blessings spring out of my 
mother earth, and eat my bread in peace and privacy ; a place where 
I may, without disturbance, meditate my approaching mortality, and 
that great account which all flesh must give at the last day to the 
God of ail spirits.^^ 

His wise and moderate desire was granted ; he was transferred , in 
1591, to the rectory of Boscomb, in Wiltshire, where he finished the 
fii'st four books of his treatise, which were printed in 1594. He 
was in the following year presented, by Queen Elizabeth, to the 
rectory of Bishop's Bourne, in Kent, whither he renioved, and where 
he spent, in learned retirement and in the faithful discharge of his 
pastoral duties, the short remainder of his life. Here he completed 
the fifth book of his great work, puUished in 1597, and also prepared 
three others, which did not appear till after his death. This event 
took place in November, 1600; and it is difficult to conceive any 
human soul, purified by suffering, elevated by the most vigorous yet 
meekest intellect, adorned by learning, and inspired by piety, passing 
through our mortal life with less of stain, and rising into a- more 
glorious existence with less need of change and purifying, tlmn the 
angelic spirit of the mild and venerable Hooker. - . 

' Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity,' " says the excellent and' acute 
historian of the literature of Europe, " might seem to fall under the 
head of theology; but, the fii'st book of this work being by much 
the best, Hooker ought rather to be reckoned amono- those who have 
weighed the principles, and delineated the boundaries, of moral and ■ 
political science." No quality is more surely a concomitant of the 
highest order of genius than its suggestiveness, and what we maji^all 
its expansive character. Though originally written to determine ,'a 
particular and limited controversy on certain matters of church disci-' 
pline. Hooker's immortal treatise is a vast arsenal or storehouse of 
ail those proofs and arguments upon which rests the whole structure 
of the moral and political edifice. " The first lays open," says D'Israeli, 
" the foundations of law and order, to escape from ' the mother of 
confusion, which breedeth destruction.' " Unhappily, however, this 
great work is incomplete; or at least so much mystery rests upon its 
publication, that it is impossible to divest the mind of the most fatal 
of all suspicions which can affect a book — suspicions as to its genuine- 
ness. At the death of Hooker his manuscripts fell into the hands 
of his despicable wife, who, marrying indecently soon after the loss 
of the good man whose constant penance she had been, at first 
refused to give any account of the precious literary remains of her 
deceased husband. It afterwards appeared that she had allowed 
various Puritan ministers (men professing the very opinions which 
Hooker had written to refute) to have free access to these papers ; 
and it is to their sacrilegious tampering that we ought doubtless to 



146 



OUTLINES or GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VHI. 



attribute not only the destruction of many of these papers, but also 
alterations which have apparently been made in the text. The 
wretched woman, who had thus betrayed the glory of her departed 
husband, was found dead in her bed the day after she had been 
forced to make this humiliating confession. The precious manu- 
scripts now passed through several hands, and an edition of the five 
books of the ' Ecclesiastical Polity' was published in 1617. " Again, 
in 1632," continues D'Israeli, who has given us the secret history of 
Hooker's great work, " the five undoubted genuine books were 
reprinted. But their fate and their perils had not yet terminated.^' 
At the troubled period of the Long Parliament, Hooker's manuscripts 
were again examined by order of the House of Commons, and the 
sixth and eighth books were given to the world. It is singular that 
in this, as well as in subsequent editions, the seventh book is not 
included ; and doubts were even raised as to the genuineness of that 
hook when restored by Dr. Gauden in his edition of the work. It is, 
however, now generally admitted that the seventh book, though 
hastily composed, is really genuine ; but we must, on the other hand, 
content ourselves with the mortifying conclusion that the so-called 
sixth book is irrecoverably lost ; that which occupies its place being 
a separate treatise, never intended to form part of the ' Ecclesiastical 
Polity.' In spite, however, of the loss of an important portion of 
its argument, in spite of the numerous and often contradictory passa- 
ges which have been interpolated by unfaithful copyists and disin- 
genuous commentators, the 'Ecclesiastical Polity' will ever remain 
one of the noblest ornaments of English literature, and one of the 
mightiest triumphs of human genius and industry. He had drunk,'* 
says Hallam, *'at the streams of ancient philosophy, and acquired 
frorti Plato and Tully somewhat of their redundancy and want of 
precision, with their comprehensiveness of observation and their 
dignity of soul." When a portion of Hooker's preface was trans- 
lated by an English Romanist to the Pope, his Holiness expressed 
the greatest surprise at the erudition and acuteness of the book. 
" There is no learning that this man has not searched into," said the 
Pontiff; " nothing too hard for his understanding, and his books will 
get reverence by age." James I. of England, a prince to whom we 
cannot deny the possession of most extensive learning, inquiring 
after Hooker, and hearing that his recent death had been deeply 
lamented by the Queen, paid the following tribute to his genius : — 
"And I receive it with no less sorrow; for I have received more 
satisfaction (that is, conviction) in reading a leaf of Mr. Hooker 
than I had in large treatises by many of the learned : many others 
write well, but yet in the next age they will be forgotten." Hooker's 
style, though full of vigorous and idiomatic expressions, is much 
more Latin and artificial than was usual at that time : he does not 
disfigure his sentences with that vain parade of quotation which dis- 



CHAP. YIII.] 



JEREMY TAYLOR: HIS LIFE. 



147 



tinguishes contemporary writings : his profound learning was, if we 
may use the expression, chemically and not mechanically united with 
his mind; it was incorporated not by contact, but by solution. 
Though the general tone of the work is of course abstract and even 
dry, the sweet and simple character of the man sometimes makes 
itself perceptible through the elaborate and brilliant panoply of the 
orator 5 or, to use the beautiful words of D'Israeli, " Hooker is the 
first vernacular writer whose classical pen harmonised a numerous 
prose. While his earnest eloquence, freed from all scholastic pedan- 
try, assumes a style stately in its structure, his gentle spirit sometimes 
flows into natural humour, lovely in the freshness of its simplicity.'' 
In purity and meekness of personal character, in immensity of 
erudition, and in power of eloquence, there is a strong resemblance 
between the great writer of whom we have just feebly attempted to 
give a sketch and the sweet orator to whom we are about to turn our 
attention — Jeremy Taylor. They were both stamped with the 
majestic impress of that noble age of our literature, when the minds 
of men seemed to possess something of the simplicity, grandeur, 
and freshness which we fondly believe characterized (at least phy- 
sically) the primeval races of mankind. Taylor's learning, indeed, 
was hardly less vast and multifarious than that of Hooker; but, 
whether from the poetical and imaginative turn of his mind, or 
from the greater temptations offered by the more declamatory nature 
of the subjects of his writings, his erudition appears less under his 
command than Hooker's. The latter may be compared to the 
Roman warrior, whose arms indeed were weighty, but not so much 
so as to impair his strength and agility in the combat ; while Taylor 
reminds us rather of the knight of the Middle Ages, sheathed from 
plume to spur in shining and ponderous panoply, but his armour is 
too complicated in its parts to admit of free motion, and the very 
plumes, and scarfs, and penoncelles which adorn it, are an impedi- 
ment, no less than a decoration. We find, in short, in the writings 
of Taylor something of that diffuse, sensuous, and effeminate over- 
richness which distinguishes the style of many of the Grreek and 
Roman fathers — Tertullian, for instance, or Chrysostom. But in 
spite of these defects, we cannot conceal our conviction that the 
works of Jeremy Taylor are, upon the whole, the finest production 
of English ecclesiastical literature ; or, to use the strong but hardly 
exaggerated language of Parr, "they are fraught with guileless 
ardour, with peerless eloquence, and with the richest stores of 
knowledge, historical, classical, scholastic, and theological." 

He was born in the humblest rank of life (his father was a barber 
at Cambridge), in the year 1613, and entered Caius College, in that 
university, in his thirteenth year. On taking his bachelor's degree 
in 1631 he entered into holy orders, and made his first step in the 
career of ecclesiastical advancement, bv preaching, for a friend; in 
12 



148 



OUTLINES or GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VIII. 



St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Here his eloquence, his learning, 
and what a contemporary calls "his florid and youthful beauty and 
pleasant air/' procured him immediate reputation, and the notice of 
Archbishop Laud, who made him his chaplain, gave him preferment 
in the Church, and presented him to a fellowship in All Souls' Col- 
lege, Oxford. lie married, in 1639, Phoebe Langdale, by whom he 
had three sons, all of whom he had the misfortune to survive. But 
this prosperous and peaceful existence was now overshadowed by the 
clouds of that tremendous storm which was soon to burst upon 
England, and in its fury not only to sweep away the altar and the 
throne, but almost to efface the very foundations of society. At the 
breaking out of the civil war Taylor sided warmly with the royalist 
party, and even wrote a defence of episcopacy. In the troubles 
which followed he was taken prisoner by the parliamentary army in 
the battle fought under the walls of Cardigan Castle. The royalist 
cause now met with a long succession of reverses ; and Taylor, who 
had been released by the victorious party, determined to retire alto- 
gether from what he probably foresaw was a hopeless struggle, and 
one in which an ecclesiastic could hardly hope to mingle with much 
utility to his party or much honour to his professional character. 
He retired to Wales, and established a school at Newton Hall, in 
Carmarthenshire, where he remained in tranquillity, without in- 
curring any very violent or persevering persecution at the hands of 
the dominant party. His own account of this portion of his life is 
interesting and beautiful. "In the great storm which dashed the 
vessel of the Church all in pieces I had been cast on the coast of 
Wales; and, in a little boat, thought to have enjoyed that rest and 
quietness which in England, in a far greater, I could not hope for. 
Here I cast anchor, and, thinking to ride safely, the storm followed 
me with so impetuous violence, that it broke a cable, and I lost my 
anchor. And here again I was exposed to the mercy of the sea, 
and the gentleness of an element that could neither distinguish 
things nor persons ; and, but that he He that stilleth the raging of 
the sea, and the noise of the waves, and the madness of his people, 
had provided a plank for me, I had been lost to all opportunities of 
content and study ; but I know not whether I have been more pre- 
served by the courtesies of my friends or the gentleness and mercies 
of a noble enemy." 

The passage just quoted is taken from Taylor's dedication to the 
^Liberty of Prophesying,' his first work of a universal and perma- 
nent importance. The object of this admirable production is "to 
show the Unreasonableness of Prescribing to other Men's Faith, and 
the Iniquity of Persecuting Differing Opinions." It is, in fact, the 
first complete and powerful vindication that the world had ever seen 
of the great principle of religious toleration. Proud, indeed, may 
England justly be in the reflection that it was she who first gave to 



CHAP. YIII.] JEREMY TAYLOR : HIS WORKS. 



149 



the world the Doble birth of Religious and Civil Liberty — those 
twin-sisters, eternal and inseparable, the fairest and strongest children 
of Heaven. With the line of argument taken by Taylor in this 
production we have nothing to do at present : viewed as a mere work 
of literature, it is distinguished by all the excellences which mark 
his style, though at the same time it is more argumentative and less 
declamatory than his other writings. 

His wife having died three years after her marriage, in 1642, 
Taylor contracted a second alliance during his residence in Wales. 
His second wife was Mrs. Joanna Bridges, said to have been a 
natural daughter of Charles I., a lady possessed of a considerable 
estate in Carmarthenshire. Though thus relieved from the necessity 
of continuing to be a schoolmaster, he appears at different times to 
have suffered serious losses from fines and sequestrations, and even 
to have been imprisoned on one occasion, if not more, for having too 
freely expressed his sentiments on public and church affairs. His 
literary activity, however, did not for a moment relax, and will be 
best proved by the enumeration of some of his principal works : — 
'An Apology for authorised and set Forms of Liturgy;^ 'The Life 
of Christ, the G-reat Exemplar/ published in 1648 ; 'The Rule and 
Exercise of Holy Living/ and 'The Rule and Exercise of Holy 
Dying,' two admirable treatises of Christian conduct, which, like the 
last-named work, have taken a permanent place in the religious 
literature of the English Church. Besides these, and a great num- 
ber of sermons, he wrote 'Golden G-rove,' a small but admirable 
manual of devotion, so named after the seat of his friend and 
neighbour the Earl of Carbery; and a treatise on the subject of 
Original Sin, which involved him in a controversy with the Calvin- 
ists on the one hand, and the High Church party on the other. 
This is the only occasion on which Taylor's courtesy and gentleness 
of character appear to have at all deserted him. The Restoration 
was now at hand, when the long-oppressed Church might look for- 
ward to tranquillity and peace, and when the devoted adherents of 
the monarchy and the constitution might reasonably expect some 
reward for their sacrifices and their fidelity. 

Their hopes, however, were cruelly disappointed : the profligate 
monarch forgot, in his moment of prosperity, all the lessons which 
exile and distress might have taught even the most insensible ; and 
it is satisfactory to think that one exception was made to the melan- 
choly uniformity of ingratitude, and that one pious and apostolic 
clergyman was rewarded for his sufferings and for his virtues. Tay- 
lor was made Bishop of Down and Conner, to which see was after- 
wards annexed that of Dromore, also in Ireland. These well-won 
and nobly-worn dignities Taylor did not long enjoy, for he died of a 
fever at Lisburn, in Ireland, on the 13th of xlugust, 1667, in the 
fifty-fifth year of his age. 



150 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VIII. 



His character was truly apostolic, and liis was one of those rare 
and excellent natures which appear equally venerable in prosperity 
and in adversity; the one not able to swell him with pride, nor the 
other to humiliate the simple grandeur of his soul. 

''The sermons of Jeremy Taylor are far above any that had pre- 
ceded them in the English Church. An imagination essentially 
poetical, and sparing none of the decorations which, by critical rules, 
are deemed almost peculiar to verse; a warm tone of piety, sweet- 
ness, and charity; an accumulation of circumstantial accessories 
whenever he reasons, or persuades, or describes ; an erudition pour- 
ing itself forth in quotation, till his sermons become in some places 
almost a garland of flowers from all other writers, and especially those 
of classical antiquity, never before so redundantly scattered from the 
pulpit — distinguish Taylor from his contemporaries by their degree, 
us they do from most of his successors by their kind. His sermons 
on the Marriage King, on the House of Feasting, on the Apples of 
Sodom, may be named, without disparagement to others which per- 
haps ought to stand in equal place. But they are not without con- 
siderable faults. The eloquence of Taylor is great, but it is not 
eloquence of the highest class ; it is far too Asiatic, too much in the 
style of Chrysostom and other declaimers of the fourth century, by 
the study of whom he had probably vitiated his taste ; his learning 
is ill placed, and his arguments often as much so — not to mention 
that he has the common defect of alleging nugatory proofs; his 
vehemence loses its effect by the circuity of his pleonastic language ; 
his sentences are of endless length, and hence not only altogether 
unmusical, but not always reducible to grammar. But he is still 
the greatest ornament of the English pulpit up to the middle of 
the seventeenth century; and we have no reason to believe, or 
rather much reason to disbelieve, that he had any competitor in other 
languages.'^ 

There can be very little doubt of the general justice of the above 
criticism ; and as the passage is calculated to give, as far as it goes, 
a faithful idea of the peculiarities — and particularly of the faults — of 
Jeremy Taylor's prose style, we have not scrupled to quote it here; 
we cannot, however, do so without remarking on what, to us at least, 
appears to be a defect in the general judgments of the excellent 
author from whose work we have extracted it. 

No one can deny Hallam the praise of perfect acquaintance with 
the vast subject he has so ably illustrated, of a store of learning 
equally accurate and profound, and of a singularly clear and lucid 
style ; but at the same time he will be generally found, we think, to 
have been barely just to the English literature of the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries. Whether from the peculiar bent of his 
personal tastes, from the particular direction of his reading, or from 
the habit of periodical criticism, the discriminating faculty in his 



CHAP. VIII.] JEREMY TAYLOR : HIS STYLE. 



151 



powerful mind appears to have been developed disproportionately 
with, nay, even perhaps at the expense of, the admiring or appreciat- 
ing power : in other words, he exhibits a strong and possibly involun- 
tary tendency to prefer what is consonant with a pure and regular 
system of rules to that which bears the stamp of vigorous and 
possibly irregular originality. His mind delights rather in what is 
negatively than in what is positively beautiful. Without enthusiasm, 
criticism becomes rather a dogmatic art than an ennobling and pro- 
ductive science; and Hallam will appear, in doing ample justice to 
the more regular and colder schools of literature in Europe, to have 
hardly been sufficiently warm in his praise of the great writers of 
this, the boldest and most impassioned period of his country's intel- 
lectual history. In our opinion, the richness, the inexhaustible 
fertility, the exquisite and subtle harmony, and the fervent and yet 
gentle piety which distinguish every page of Jeremy Taylor's writ- 
ings, nay, the mere abundance of new ideas, and particularly the 
multitude of images drawn by him from the common objects and 
phenomena of nature, would of themselves be more than sufficient 
to place this great poet — for a poet he was, in the highest sense of 
the term — at least on an equality with any orator of the so-called 
classical school of French pulpit eloquence. 

In the peculiarity to which we have just alluded he is indeed 
Shaksperian ; few prose authors in the English language, and cer- 
tainly none in any other, having surpassed Taylor in the number, 
the beauty, or the novelty of images drawn from rural life, from the 
lovely or sublime objects of nature, from the graces of infancy and 
the tenderest endearments of affection — those images, in short, which 
we never meet without a gentle flush and thrill of the heart ; for 
they are echoes and emanations from a purer, a more innocent, and 
a happier existence. 

In one respect, indeed, there exists a resemblance between Taylor 
and Shakspeare so striking as hardly to have escaped any one who 
has studied the literary physiognomy of this wonderful epoch ; we 
allude to that exulting and abounding richness of fancy which causes 
them to be lured away at every turn from the principal aim of their 
reasoning by the bright phantoms which perpetually arise during its 
pursuit. As, in a country richly stocked with game, the hounds are 
perpetually drawn off from their chase by the fresh quarry they have 
started as they run, the minds of these writers seem incapable of 
resisting the temptation of turning aside to hunt the fancies started 
by their restless imagination. This is, it is true, often a defect, and 
sometimes produces confusion, and injures the very effect of the 
author's reasoning; few readers are able to follow the irregular 
movements of the poet's inconstant and suggestive imagination ; to 
do that would imply a vivacity of perception resembling the creative 
energy of the poet himself. This discursive character is indeed 



152 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VIII. 



perceptible in almost all the writings of this gigantic era — in those 
of Bacon no less than in those of Shakspeare ; it is essentially the 
peculiarity of a highly creative age; and though, after accompanying 
the poet or orator through the long and varied maze of his discursive 
wanderings, we may occasionally find that we have travelled far from 
the direct road of argument, we ought to be grateful for the many 
diversified and lovely views he has shown us in the journey, and for 
the fresh and fragrant flowers which he has plucked for us as we 
wandered. 

" We will venture to assert," says a critic who has written of this 
period of our literature with a warmth of enthusiasm that renders 
his judgment more genial, and therefore in our opinion mor5 just, 
than the colder and more cautious approbation of Hallam — "we will 
venture to assert that there is in any one of the prose folios of Jere- 
my Taylor more fine fancy and original imagery — more brilliant 
conceptions and glowing expressions — more new figures and new 
applications of old figures — more, in short, of the body and the soul 
of poetry, than in all the odes and the epics that have since been 
produced in Europe. There are large portions of Barrow, and 
Hooker, and Bacon, of which we may say nearly as much : nor can 
any one have a tolerable idea of the riches of our language and our 
native genius, who has not made himself acquainted with the prose- 
writers as well as the poets of this memorable period.''^ 

The three great names which we have selected to form the subject 
of the present chapter have been chosen from different though suc- 
cessive periods in the history of the Anglican Church, in order that 
the reader might remark in what peculiarities they differ, and in 
what they resemble one another ; and thus that some notion might 
be formed as to the points of similitude or difference existing in the 
epochs of which they are the representatives. In Hooker we have 
seen the legislative, in Taylor the oratorical feature of religious 
writing most strongly developed ; in Barrow we shall remark the 
deliberate species of eloquence existing in the highest force. If the 
first of these great men has dug deep into the eternal rock on which 
is founded the whole edifice of human society, in search of materials 
with which to build up the frame of ecclesiastical polity ; if the 
second, by a sweet and abundant eloquence, has made religion lovely 
and amiable in our eyes, hanging on the altar of God the freshest 
garlands of fancy and imagination, and dedicating the rich products 
of intellect and poetry to the service of that Being whose most 
precious gifts they are, even as Abel offered up to the Lord the first- 
lings of his flock we shall find that the third in this illustrious triad 
of great theologians did not fall short of his predecessors, either in 
the value of the gifts which he brought as tribute to the same altar, 
or in the fervency and purity of his ministration. There is a very 
strong resemblance between the characters of Barrow and of Pascal. 



CHAP. VIII.] barrow: compared to pascal. 



153 



A comparison, it is true, between the respective styles of these two 
writers would be in some measure an injury to the immortal author 
of the ' Provincial Letters / for Barrow's writings, vigorous and even 
admirable as they undoubtedly are, hardly exhibit that wonderful 
condensation and originality which make every line of Pascal appeal 
so irresistibly and so instantaneously to the highest powers of our 
intellect, and make us pause and meditate as each new expression 
seems to open to us a long vista of deductions, or suggests to us a 
vast and complex train of reasoning. Nor indeed is the style of 
Barrow remarkable, in so high a degree at least, for the frequent 
occurrence of those admirable expressions so abundant in every 
page of the great French theologian : expressions at once simple and 
profound, intensely idiomatic, yet perfectly new. Yet if we look for 
a manly and fervid eloquence, for a mighty and sustained power 
kept under control by the severest logic, for a peculiar quality of 
mastery and vigour to which all tasks appear equally easy, we may 
point with pride to the writings of Barrow. ^' He is equally distin- 
guished,^' says an acute and able critic, " for the redundancy of his 
matter, and for the pregnant brevity of his expression ; but what 
more particularly characterises his manner is a certain air of powerful 
and of conscious facility in the execution of whatever he undertakes. 
Whether the subject be mathematical, metaphysical, or theological, 
he seems always to bring to it a mind which feels itself superior to 
the occasion, and which, in contending with the greatest difficulties, 
' puts forth but half its strength.' " 

Like Pascal, Barrow was one of the greatest physical philosophers 
of his own, or indeed of any, age ; he was the friend and the precep- 
tor of Newton, and a fellow-labourer with the most illustrious of 
modern investigators in many fields of natural science, particularly 
in the departments of optics and astronomy. He thus brought to 
the task of demonstrating the nature and ne(;essity of our Christian 
duties, and of inculcating the precepts of evangelic morality, a mind 
trained in the investigation of abstract truth, and a severe and 
majestic eloquence, the handmaid of the strictest and most compre- 
hensive logic. He was a man of vast and multifarious attainments, 
as a very brief sketch of his life will sufficiently prove. Born in 
London, in 1630, of humble though not indigent parentage, he 
early entered, at Cambridge, on that career which ultimately rendered 
his name one of the brightest ornaments of that university. Finding 
that the religious dissensions of the period of the Commonwealth, 
and particularly the predominance during that period of opinions 
totally at variance with his own, precluded any hope of success in 
the clerical profession, he turned his attention to medicine, and culti- 
vated with ardour many of the sciences which are subservient to that 
pursuit, as anatomy, botany, and chemistry. Nor did he neglect the 
studies which we should consider more peculiarly congenial to the 



154 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. VIII. 



venerable walls of his "Alma Mater/' he became a candidate for 
the professorship of Greek in 1655, but, failing in his attempt to 
obtain that dignity, he went abroad, and passed some years in the 
East, and particularly at Smyrna and Constantinople. Returning to 
England in 1659, Barrow obtained the professorship for which he 
had been before an unsuccessful candidate, and to this post were 
added several others, of less dignity indeed, but sufi&ciently proving 
the high reputation enjoyed by Barrow in many different and dissi- 
milar departments of knowledge. In 1663 he resigned these appoint- 
ments for that of Lucasian professor of mathematics in the university, 
a post which he filled with increasing glory for six years, at the end 
of which period he vacated it in favour of his immortal contemporary, 
Newton. His rise to public distinction was now steady and rapid : 
he was successively appointed one of the king's chaplains ; nominated, 
in 1672, Master of his college — that of Trinity, which thus possessed 
within its bosom at one time two of the greatest and most virtuous 
men who ever dignified humanity — the king paying Barrow, as he 
conferred upon him this deserved honour, the just compliment of 
saying that he had bestowed it " on the best scholar in England 
and lastly he was elected, in 1675, Vice-Chancellor of the University, 
which dignity he enjoyed only two years, as he died of a fever in 
1677, at the age of forty-six. 

Barrow is an admirable specimen of a class of men who, fortunately 
for the political, the literary, and the theological glory of England, 
have adorned her two great seats of learning, Oxford and Cambridge, 
at almost every period of her history. Possessed of vast, solid, and 
diversified learning, with practice and experience in the affairs of real 
life corrected and rendered philosophical by retirement and medita- 
tion, with the intense and concentrated industry of the monk guided 
by the sense of utility of the man of the world, these rigorous scho- 
lars seem peculiarly adapted by Providence to become firm and ma- 
jestic pillars of such an ecclesiastical establishment as the Church of 
England. " Blessed is she," — we may venture to apply the words 
of Scripture, — "for she has her quiver full of them !" 



CHAP. IX.] 



MILTON: HIS CHAPtACTEK. 



155 



CHAPTER IX. 

JOHN MILTON. 

Character of the Poet — Religious and Political Opinions — Republicanism — 
His Learning — Travels in Italy — Prose Works — Areopagitica — Prose Style 
— 'I'reatises on Divorce — His Literary Meditations — Tractate of Education — 
Passion for Music — Paradise Lost — Dante and Milton compared — Study of 
Romance — Campbell's Criticism — Paradise Regained — Minor Poems — 
Samson Agonistes. 

Milton says, in one of the most admirable and characteristic of 
his prose works, that a poet should be in his own Kfe and person a 
^'true poem — that is, a composition of the best and ntj5)lest things;" 
and whatever discrepancy we may find between the works and the 
characters of inferior writers, we shall never fail to remark, in the 
case of that small number consisting of the very greatest names in 
the history of the human mind, a certain, perfect, and wonderful 
accordance between the character of the man and the peculiar excel- 
lences of his productions. Of the four great Evangelists of the 
human mind. Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton, each is in some 
measure, personally as well as intellectually, the type and reflection 
of the epoch in which he lived ; and, as the appearance of these 
great luminaries of man's spiritual horizon was coincident with great 
events affecting the social destinies of our race, we may even say that 
these sublime minds at once guided and followed the direction of the 
opinions and condition of their times. 

Homer is, in fact, a short expression for the heroic or mythic 
epoch, taken in its sublimer and more lovely manifestation ; Virgil is 
the incarnation of the power, grandeur, and development of the na- 
tionality of empire ; Dante was no less the literary embodiment of 
mediaeval Christianity — that wild and wondrous phase of humanity 
which is found petrified, as it were, and presented to us in a tangible 
form, in the great triumphs of Gothic art; and our great countryman 
will seem no unapt or imperfect type of the Christianity of the Re- 
formation — that is, of Christianity combined with freedom of opinion 
and the right of private judgment carried to its extremest conse- 
quences. 

Wonderful, indeed, and complicated as is the combination of causes 
and conditions which must conspire to the production of any work of 
permanent and universal importance, and to the existence, conse- 
quently, of a mind capable of creating such a work, in no case in the 
whole history of mankind does that combination appear to have been 
so wonderful as in the example of Milton. Born in an age when the 
13 



156 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. IX. 



great advatice of civilization appeared to preclude the possibility of 
any great work appearing to rival the immortal monuments of ancient 
literature, and when men despaired — as they always have done — of a 
great epic being ever again given to the world — as if the fountains 
of the beautiful were not inexhaustible as the rivers of Paradise — he 
appears to have had a vast and all-embracing sympathy with whatever 
was ennobling in the opinions of his times. His mind was profoundly 
and wonderfully eclectic. His political and religious sentiments were 
of the extremest and even most violent character; he was a devoted 
republican, with his grand imagination ever dwelling upon the vision- 
,^ry phantoms of antique glory and virtue. In the earthquake which 
overthrew the regal and hierarchic institutions of his country, his 
unworldly and heroic soul saw only a beneficent and temporary con- 
vulsion, cleariDg the ground of its load of false temples, and pre- 
paring it for the erection of a new and glorious social edifice, with 
something of the pure proportions of the Roman Capitol or of the 
Attic Acropolis. 

In religion, too, his haughty intellect and pure morals revolted at 
that admixture of hump,n motives without which, like the baser alloy 
in metallurgy, the pure gold of Christianity can hardly be formed — 
at least as society is now constituted — into a practically useful instru- 
ment for the improvement of humanity ; and he hoped that, by for- 
cibly bringing back the Church to the structural simplicity of the 
primitive times, he would restore the pure, ardent, and evangelic 
spirit which characterised those ages. And perhaps, in a world 
peopled by Miltons and by Harringtons, such schemes and hopes 
might cease to be Utopian. Visionary as they were, these convictions 
gave a peculiar character of elevation to Milton's meditations; and 
it is not too much to say that, had his opinions on government in 
church and state been other than they were, we could have possessed 
neither the ' Areopagitica' nor the ' Paradise Lost ' — 

"And Heaven had wanted one immortal song." 

But the profession of these opinions, and the fierce zeal with which 
he advocated them, could not efiace in such a mind as Milton's the 
impressions made by mediaeval art and by the chivalrous history of 
his country. And thus there appears continually in his works, we 
will not say a contest, but a contrast, between his convictions and 
his sympathies — between his logic and his fancy. And this, which 
in an inferior mind would not have failed to produce an incessant 
uncertainty and inconsistency, in such a soul as John Milton's was 
a healthy and vivifying action : it was like the conflicting currents 
of the galvanic battery, whose opposing poles give out intensest 
light and heat. Thus, while Milton the polemic was advocating the 
overthrow of the monarchic institutions of England, and the de- 
struction of the hierarchic edifice of its Church, Milton the poet 



CHAP. IX.] 



MILTON: HIS OPINIONS. 



157 



had his soul deeply penetrated with the enthusiasm inspired by his 
country's history, and his ear ever thrilling to the majestic services 
of its half-Roman worship. The man who desired the abolition of 
all external dignities on earth has given us the grandest picture of 
such a graduated hierarchy of orders in heaven — 

"Thrones, Princedoms, Virtues, Dominations, Powers." 

He who would have reduced the externals of Christianity to a sim- 
plicity and meanness compared with which the subterranean worship 
of the persecuted Christians of the primitive times was splendour, 
has exhibited a deeper and more prevailing admiration than any 
other poet ever showed for the grandeur of Grothic architecture and 
the charms of the solemn masses of the ancient cathedrals : — 

"Bui let my due feet never fail 
To walk the studious cloisters pale; 
And love the high embowed roof. 
With antique piflars massy proof, 
And storied windows richly dight, 
Casting a dim religious light : 
There let the peaUng organ blow 
To the full-voiced quire below. 
In service high and anthems clear, 
As may w'ith sweetness, through mine ear, 
Dissolve me into ecstasies. 
And bring all heaven before mine eyes." 

In the same way, the learning of this wondrous being helped to 
give his mind that catholicity of taste which is above all things 
necessary to the production of an immortal work. His favourite 
reading, it is true, lay chiefly among the sages and tragic poets of 
ancient G-reece : he loved to wander through "the shady spaces of 
philosophy,^^ as he beautifully calls them, with his beloved Plato, to 
follow the soaring of Aristotle's eagle intellect, to listen to the chime 
of Homer's oceanic harmony, and to the more irregular music of 
Pindar, or "sad Electra's poet.^^ But all this never deadened his 
ear, or impaired his sensibility, for the wilder poesy of the chivalric 
age, nor for the more feminine and artificial graces of the Italian 
Muse. He was perhaps the most learned man who ever lived, and 
at the same time the man who had his learning the most completely 
under his command. Like Rabelais, Milton may without exaggera- 
tion be said to have traversed every region in the world of know- 
ledge explored down to his age ; but at the same time we must not 
forget the immense difference, not only in point of extent, but in 
point also of kind^ -e^ststing between the state of human knowledge 
in the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The first of these 
two wonderful men was the type of the infancy of the Reformation, 
the second the embodiment of its manhood. Milton enjoyed the 
rare advantage of a purely literary education. The intellect and 
aptitude for study exhibited by him in his earliest childhood seems 



158 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. IX. 



to have sealed him — even as the child Samson was set apart from 
his birth to the ministry — to the services of poesy and learning. 
Though educated in part in the university of Cambridge, he did not 
remain long enough within its venerable walls to acquire any par- 
ticular direction of thought which might have fettered the develop- 
ment of so mighty an intellect; but only long enough to fill his 
mind with all that is most solid and ennobling in ancient literature 
and in abstract science. The care with which he has preserved even 
the most trivial productions of his college career, his Latin verses 
and his fragments of academic comedies, and the tone of serious 
pride with which he speaks of his own youthful studies, prove to us 
what store he set upon the scholastic occupations of his youth ; and 
it behoves us to remember that what in meaner men would appear 
vanity, in Milton must be attributed to a sense of the importance of 
what in ordinary cases is little more than an unproductive and boyish 
accomplishment. On leaving the university, where his political and 
religious opinions rendered his longer residence disagreeable, if not 
impossible, the youthful Milton — already a prodigy of learning, 
with his mental graces fitly enshrined in a form distinguished for 
that pure and seraphic beauty which his person retained through 
life, and which is conspicuous in all the portraits of him — travelled 
over a considerable portion of Europe, and was received with par- 
ticular distinction in Italy. It was here that he became personally 
acquainted with one of the greatest of his contemporaries, "the 
starry Galileo, with his woes,'^ whom he saw, as he describes, "now 
grown old, a prisoner in the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy 
otherwise than as his Franciscan and Dominican censurers would 
have him." How interesting is it to picture such a meeting as that 
of Milton and Galileo ! Lofty, we may be sure, and sublime was 
their conversation, and these interviews could not fail to add new 
intensity to Milton's fervid zeal for liberty of thought. In Italy, 
too, the poet received great encomiums for his proficiency in the 
language of the country, a language in which some of his youthful 
poems are composed ; and these — as we have been assured by an 
Italian — are hardly to be detected as the work of a foreigner, and 
are, indeed, scarcely inferior to the compositions of contemporary 
Italian writers. Such encomiums as these, which, as Milton him- 
self proudly remarks, " the Italian is not forward to confer on those 
beyond the Alps," helped, undoubtedly, not only to gratify his 
haughty dignity of intellect, but probably tended to fix in his mind 
that preference for Italian literature which is so strongly perceptible 
in his works. It may, indeed, be said that, possessed as was his 
mind, and even saturated, with the spirit of antique poetry and 
philosophy, and intimate as was his ' acquaintance with the whole 
circle of dead and living languages, it was the Italian literature 
which left the deepest trace upon his mind, and gave the most 



CHAP. IX.] 



MILTON : HIS OPINIONS. 



159 



marked colouriag to his writings — particularly to those among them 
which are the more peculiar offspring of his iaste. As a proof of 
this, we need only mention some of those among his minor pieces 
which were evidently the reflection of his personal sentiments ; the 
beautiful pastoral elegy entitled ^Lycidas/ the 'Comus/ and the 
numerous sonnets which he has left us. In all these works he has 
closely followed not only the spirit, but even the forms, of Italian 
poetry. In the first-mentioned work we have a canzone, so ex- 
quisitely harmonized, and so full of the sweet and elaborate grace 
of Italian lyric poesy, that the very language and music of it has 
the echo of 

"II bel paese, dove 'I si suona;" 
and it is not too much to say that ^Lycidas' is an Italian poem 
composed in English. In ' Comus/ and the lovely fragment of the 
'Arcades,' — a work in that peculiarly Italian species of composition, 
the pastoral-romantic drama — he has surpassed Tasso as far as Tasso 
has outstripped Beccari : and as to the sonnet, Milton was the first 
man who grafted upon our more rugged language that fairest fruit 
of the Ausonian Muse. We speak of course particularly of that 
variety — the noblest — of the sonnet, whose tone and subject is not 
exclusively devoted to the passion of love, but which has been made 
a vehicle for the sublimest outbursts of patriotism and religion — the 
sonnet, in short, not of Petrarch, but of Filicaja. To this list it 
would be quite unnecessary to add those two exquisite poems, in 
which the thoughts and the mode of treatment are no less Italian 
than their titles — ^L' Allegro^ and 'II Penseroso.'' 

As Milton was born December 9th, 1608, as he retired from the 
university in 1632, and began to travel in 1638, he was, at the time 
of his sudden return from Italy (having spent only fifteen months 
on the continent), about thirty-one years of age, in the full glow 
and bloom of beauty and accomplishment. It had probably been 
his intention to remain abroad for a much longer period, but the 
breaking out of that furious controversy between the royalist and 
parliamentary parties, which ultimately led to the judicial murder of 
a king and the abolition of the regal ofiice, was an event appealing 
far too powerfully to Milton's ardent opinions in religion and politics 
to permit him to remain in a distant country a cool spectator of the 
mighty struggle. In all matters of church and state the convictions 
of the poet were in accordance with the extremest doctrines of the 
republican and Antinomian party. His dream was a commonwealth 
on the model of antiquity, in which purity of manners and dignity 
of national character would, as he fondly hoped, accompany the 
simplifying of the structure of the political machine ; he imagined, 
like reformers in all ages, that the destruction of a religious hierarchy 
would necessarily introduce, into the practice and discipline of the 
Christian church, the purity and simplicity of the primitive times. 
13* 



I 

! 

160 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. IX. 

These opinions, probably imbibed, at a very early age, from Lis 
father (who was himself, in some measure, a sufferer for conscience' 
sake), and still further exaggerated by his own haughty spirit, the 
poet now maintained with astonishing eloquence and vehemence in a 
large portion of his prose works. Though these compositions were 
in most cases written on local and temporary subjects, 'and though 
the fierce and often sophistical character of their argumentation may 
have contributed to withdraw them from the study of the general 
reader, the prose works of Milton are so strongly characteristic of 
their illustrious author, and contain so many passages of sublimity 
and beauty, that some acquaintance with this portion of his writings 
is indispensable for any one desirous of forming a true idea of the 
intellectual physiognomy of England's greatest epic poet. The study 
of these works presents us with a new and most striking phase of his 
character and history : we see still the grand, colossal, and seraphic 
lineaments of that intellectual being which has given us the picture 
of primeval innocence, of the splendors of Paradise, and the undying 
agonies of fallen yet immortal spirits; but those lineaments are 
contracted with indignation, and lurid with fanatic and persecuting 
zeal ; the soul of Milton is still a mighty angel, but it is an angel 
of wrath and destruction — it is Azrael, the angel of death. 

The prose works of Milton possessing such peculiar features, and 
having occupied, in the composition, a portion of his life which may 
be considered apart from those epochs in his history which gave birth 
to his immortal poems, we will devote a few sentences to a rapid 
notice of their subjects, and an attempt to fix their value. Among 
the principal of these extraordinary compositions it will sufl&ce to 
mention, in the first place, ^ Areopagitica,' perhaps the noblest of 
them all : this is a ' Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing 
to the Parliament of England.' It is singular enough, and charac- 
teristic of the inconsistency which always accompanies the policy of 
revolutionists, that the fanatic Parliament of England exercised a 
sway infinitely sterner and more tyrannical than had ever been at- 
tempted to be enforced by the government which it had overthrown ; 
and while the thousand wild sects which now wielded with ruthless 
hands the powers usurped from the British Constitution maintained 
in its fullest development the right of individual liberty and the 
privilege of absolute freedom of private judgment, the inquisition on 
the press was never so severe as under their oppressive domination. 
Pretending to be the priests and servants of truth, and of free opinion 
— the nurse of truth — they fettered the expression of all conclusions 
not in harmony with their own exaggerated doctrines : the press was 
absolutely manacled, and fine, sequestration, and military law, the 
dungeon, the pillory, and the scourge were the rewards for the publi- 
cation of anything not in servile accordance with their notions. 

Eternal honour, then, to Milton, that he manfully stood up for 



CHAP. IX.] 



Milton's prose style. 



161 



that great principle Tvithout which all the professions of the republi- 
cans were nothing but hypocrisy and inconsistence ! It was an object 
worthy of his lofty and ethereal spirit ; and nobly indeed did he 
fulfil it. ' Areopagitica^ is a most eloquent and conclusive exposition 
of the necessity and advantages of a free press, and, though entitled 
a ^'Speech,'' is rather an "Oration," conceived and executed in the 
spirit of the great monuments of classic oratory. 

None, probably, of our readers are ignorant that the orations of 
Pemosthenes and Cicero were elaborate and previously prepared com- 
positions; and that they in no way resemble that extempore species 
of eloquence which is specified by the term " speech," a word bor- 
rowed from the parliamentary eloquence of that country which has 
produced the greatest triumphs in this kind of harangue. Milton's 
style in this noble production, as well as in all his prose works, is in 
the highest degree m^ajestic, and is a perfect reflex of the character 
of the man. 

The truth is, that Milton's mind was so completely imbued, so 
saturated, with ancient, and particularly with Grreek, literature, that 
he could not help imitating, often perhaps unconsciously, the involved 
structure, the complicated arrangement, and the half-rhythmical 
cadence of the sentences of Plato or of Isocrates. 

In his eagerness to engraft upon our more rugged and unpliant 
tongue something of the delicacy, something of the ever-varying 
flexibility which characterises the ancient classical languages, he may 
be pardoned if he sometimes forgets the impossibility of complete 
success, and the danger of falling into obscurity and aflectation, as 
well as an air of constraint and pedantry. A totally uninflected 
tongue as the English is can never be forcibly submitted, even by 
the boldness and the genius of such a mind as Milton's, to the laws 
which govern a difi'erent language. Independently of the tone of 
learned and scholastic gravity naturally acquired by a proud and 
retiring student, something of the peculiar Latinisms and G-raecisms 
which distinguish Milton's style in poetry no less than in prose (much 
less obtrusively, it is ti'ue, and oS'ensively in the former than in the 
latter) may be doubtless attributed to his proud contempt for the 
mean vulgarity which distinguished the style of many of his contem- 
poraries, and particularly the party with some of whose religious and 
political opinions the great poet had identified himself. Like a man 
of noble birth and aristocratic manners accidentally embracing the 
popular side in a revolutionary movement, Milton appears ever 
anxious that he should not be confounded with the rude and ignorant 
mob in whose ranks he for a moment may find himself, and puts on 
a double portion of stateliness and dignity. Having spoken of what 
certainly appears the most complete and important of his prose works, 
and also the one which possesses the most general and intrinsic 
interest, the ^ Areopagitica/ we will say a few words of several other 



162 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. IX. 



compositions likely to attract the reader's attention by their singu- 
larity or by the precious details they give us of the author's personal 
character, sentiments, and pursuits. Milton composed two celebrated 
treatises on the law of divorce, which throw a great light upon the 
poet's opinions respecting the rights and social importance of the 
female sex, and pretty clearly indicate the almost Asiatic contempt 
with which he regarded the fairer part of the creation. At the same 
time these works give us a most extraordinary idea of the boldness, 
nay, the audacity, which characterises all Milton's speculations. 
Will it be believed that in one of these works, the. ^ Tetrachordon,' 
an exposition of the four places of the Old Testament in which the 
law of divorce is expressly treated, Milton has endeavoured to estab- 
lish, from the rules and practice of Hebrew legislation, the lawful- 
ness of allowing not only personal but moral " uncleanness" to form 
the ground of separation between man and wife ; and that in various 
passages of these books the most extreme latitude in this respect is not 
only tolerated but approved ? It is true that much of this eagerness 
to facilitate divorce may have arisen from a desire to relax, in his 
own case, the strictness of the marriage tie ; for we know that his 
first marriage was an unhappy one, and that, his wife (the daughter 
of a cavalier) having left him and refused to return to his house, 
probably disgusted by the studious gloom and religious severity of 
the poet's life, he actually gave proof of the sincerity of his opinions 
by paying his addresses to another lady, whom he would infallibly 
have married but for the voluntary return and submission of his 
rebellious partner. 

The other work to which we have alluded is unspeakably precious 
as giving us an insight into his own studies and literary meditations ; 
and though these most interesting details are scattered irregularly 
over all his productions, there are two passages so peculiarly rich in 
these invaluable notices, that they must be, independently of their 
own intrinsic gi-andeur and eloquence, among the most striking 
passages of autobiography which the world has ever seen. In one 
of them he gives a minute account of his own daily life and occupa- 
tions, and in the other, after describing his youthful studies, and the 
grand aspirations of his early ambition, he gravely passes in review 
before him a number of the sublimest subjects for some future work 
which should make his name immortal, and, with a serious and sus- 
tained enthusiasm than which perhaps the whole history of literature 
contains nothing more solemn and more sublime, promises to leave 
" something so writ as future ages shall not willingly let die." In 
this passage he proposes to himself a number of the mightest events 
in the history of mankind; he explains the means by which the 
immortal work could alone be worthily executed ; he describes the 
intense labour, the severe meditation, and expense of Palladian 
oil'' which such a work would require ; and, above all, expresses his 



CHAP. IX.] 



MILTON S PROSE WORKS. 



163 



conviction that tlie true inspiration for such an effort of creative 
energy was to be sought for " not in the invocation of Dame Memory 
and her Syren daughters, but in devout prayer to that Spirit who 
can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and who sendeth out 
his seraphim with fire from his altar to touch and purify the lips of 
whom he pleaseth." From hopes so sublime as these, expressed 
with so fervent and yet so exalted a devotion, and supported by such 
unequalled powers and so intense and irresistible an industry, we 
might well expect a ' Paradise Lost/ 

In his singular little work, a ' Tractate (treatise) on Education,' 
Milton sets forth his own peculiar opinions on that all-important 
subject, and handles it with his usual boldness and originality of 
view. The book is distinguished by the same grand and organ-like 
harmony of language, and by the same tone of lofty dignity of 
thought, that mark all he ever wrote : in the project itself, as the 
subject under discussion is of a peculiarly practical nature, we find 
even more than his usual audacity of innovation and visionary sub- 
limity of design. Naturally a despiser of authority and precedent, 
and living in an age when great political convulsions made all men 
familiar with the wildest schemes of moral and social regeneration, 
Milton has drawn in this book a plan for an entirely new system of 
national education. We are not, therefore, surprised to find that he 
rejects the whole machinery of the school and the university, con- 
sidering the defects of each species of institution as in no way 
counterbalaoced by their advantages ; and proposes, in place of the 
ancient method, a system chiefly imitated from the gymnasia of 
Sparta and of Athens ! G-rand, noble, colossal, but at the same time 
(as our readers need hardly be cautioned) totally impracticable and 
Utopian, Milton^ s plan of education embraces, like that of the ancient 
Greeks, as may be collected from the half-fabulous accounts of the 
antique philosophers and historians, the physical no less than the 
moral and intellectual development of the human powers : the bodies 
of the English youth were to be trained in all kinds of corporeal and 
gymnastic exercises, while their minds were to be occupied with the 
whole cycle of human knowledge, in which the arts, particularly that 
of music, were by no means to be neglected. The whole scheme 
reminds the reader of nothing so strongly as of the half-burlesque 
description of the education of Pantagruei in the immortal romance 
of Rabelais : and this will be quite enough to show its almost ludi- 
crously impracticable character. Visionary, however, as is the gene- 
ral design, there are in this half-forgotten tract of Milton a thousand 
traces of wisdom, of genius, and of sublimity, such as no hand but 
his own could have left; and even many of the suggestions are 
becoming generally adopted in the more complete and generous edu- 
cation of the present day, pailicularly the more extended and 
universal study of music. 



164 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. IX. 



This was an art of which Milton never speaks without a peculiar 
and most touching enthusiasm ; never does he omit to describe — and 
assuredly no poet has ever described them more frequently or more 
admirably — the charms and the virtues of music. Coleridge has 
called him (rather pointedly than justly, it is true) " less a pic- 
turesque than a musical poet and not only does the grandeur and 
the might of music incessantly form the subject of his most willing 
and most glorious soarings into the empyrean of poesy, but in all 
his works we find a peculiar and recognisable music, an echo of that 
celestial and seraphic harmony which rolls for ever before the throne 
of God — " a sevenfold chorus of Hallelujahs and harping symphonies." 
It was to music that Milton owed the only moments of relaxation 
which he permitted himself in the intervals of the severe and inces- 
sant studies, the fierce and strenuous controversies of his youth and 
manhood: the aspirations and the prayers which his proud and 
haughty spirit deigned not to send up to heaven from the midst of 
any congregation of Christians, rose, at dawn and eventide, upon 
the swelling notes of the organ, which he touched with no unskilful 
hand, or the more modest chords of his lute ; and when " fallen on 
evil tongues and evil days, with darkness and with dangers compassed 
round," in blindness, in poverty, in neglect, with all his bright hopes 
and all his romantic visions shattered and crushed for ever, then it 
was that Music became the consolation and the comforter of her 
fondest worshipper, and breathed her softest melodies and her sub- 
limest thunderbursts into the marvellous verses of the ^Paradise 
Lost.' 

The political career of England's greatest epic poet has been de- 
Bcribed by a vast variety of writers ; and while some have seen in the 
whole of his public life nothing but a manifestation of virtue and 
independence, others have found reigning throughout his political life 
the malignity of the fanatic and the ferocious arrogance of the 
revolutionist. It will be the safest, and probably also the most just 
judgment, to take a middle course between these two extremes; and 
posterity, we think, will confirm our own conclusion with respect to 
the character of this admirable genius viewed as a Christian and as 
a citizen. It is impossible not to agree with the republican critics 
at least so far as regards the sincerity in the expression of opinion 
which none have pretended to deny to Milton ; but on the other 
hand we think that this illustrious name may well serve as a beacon 
to those ardent and aspiring spirits who think that genius, learning, 
and sincerity will suffice alone to guard human nature from error, 
from folly, or from crime, and who forget the deep truth of that 
admirable precept of the G-reat Founder of our religion, Be ye as 
little children." In the case of an inferior and a less pure mind 
than Milton's, the sincerity of his republican opinions might perhaps 
be pleaded in excuse for the unfairness and violence of some of- his 



CHAP. IX.] 



PARADISE LOST. 



165 



attacks upon the monarchic institutions of his country; and the 
universal coarseness and bratalitj of tone then prevalent in the style 
of controversy may be held as palliating the unchristian and inhuman 
malignity which characterises much of his polemic writings j parti- 
cularly in his celebrated controversy with Salmasius ; but surely no 
such excuses will serve to diminish our reprobation for Milton^ s 
slanderous attacks on the personal character of Charles I., who 
appears, as a man, to have been worthy of respect, and even of vene- 
ration : who was, besides, an unfortunate and innocent prince, and 
had paid with his blood for the errors of an administration whichj 
however erroneous, was at least well-intentioned. Nor can any one 
hope, but by sophistry, to excuse or justify the various acts of submis- 
sion to arbitrary and usurped power which form so strong a contrast to 
Milton's perpetual and rather obtrusive assertions of independence — 
his accepting office, for instance, under the government of Cromwell ; 
his adulation of that wily despot; and above all, the melancholy 
w^eakness (if indeed we ought not rather to use a much severer term) 
which allowed him to profit by the plunder of the unfortunate and 
martyred sovereign, and to decorate his studious retirement with the 
pilfered trappings of royal magnificence ; for, alas ! we still possess 
the parliamentary order permitting " Mr. John Milton,'^ Latin Secre- 
tary of the House of Commons, to choose and take away such 
hangings as he thinks fit'^ from the dismantled palace of Whitehall. 

Such facts as these are painful and humiliating, but salutary also; 
they powerfully demonstrate that the greatest genius and the sub- 
limest virtues can never guard from folly and from error the man 
who once loses sight of those plain and simple rules of human con- 
duct — ^Tear God, and honour the King." 

At the beginning of this chapter we presented Milton to our 
readers in the character of the great epic poet of Christianity, and 
we expressed in a brief allusion the difference between the tone of 
thought and conception perceptible in the 'Paradise Lost' and that 
which pervades the ' Divina Commedia.' There is, indeed, a sin- 
gular resemblance between the intellectual features of Milton and 
Dante, and no small similarity also in their lives. Both possessed 
of all the knowledge of their age, both deeply versed in the loftiest 
subtleties of theology, both animated by a stern and intense religious 
enthusiasm, yet with minds susceptible of the softest as well as the 
sublimest emotions, each of them is the type and embodiment of an 
age of violent social convulsion. The fierce and bloody struggles 
of Guelf and Ghibelline which drove the great Florentine to wander 
and die in exile, and the spirit of faction which infuses the waters 
of Marah throughout every page of the Divine Comedy, will form a 
very close parallel with the furious civil conflicts which ended in the 
Protectorate, and the republican and sectarian haughtiness of Mil- 
ton's political and polemic writiugs. But the dififerenoe is, that 



166 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. IX. 



Dante is essentially and peculiarly a Romanist poet, while Milton 
may be considered as tlie incarnation of the reformed faith — or 
rather of that faith in its extremest Calvinistic intensity. In their 
manner of treatment the two poets differ immensely, though grandeur 
is the distinguishing peculiarity of each ; but the grandeur of Dante 
seems rather to proceed from the intense earnestness with which he 
realises his terrific or sublime creations, while that of the English 
poet seems rather to spring from idealising the phantoms of his 
imagination : in the one case it is the concretive, in the other the 
abstractive power ; the one is a painter, the other a sculptor. If we 
may venture to take our illustration from a sister art, we should 
rather compare the immortal poem of Dante to some of those extra- • 
ordinary conceptions of the grim monastic genius of the Middle 
Ages in which our terror and interest are powerfully excited by 
representations whose elements are familiar and every-day • while 
Milton's poetical conceptions recall rather the pure outline, the 
subdued tints, and the grand and pure simplicity of Raphael or of 
the classical sculpture. All readers have remarked this wonderful 
power of realizing in the one, and the perhaps equalty wonderful 
faculty of idealizing in the other. When we follow Dante into the 
tremendous scenes of eternal punishment, we meet the poet's friends 
and acquaintance, speaking and acting as in the world ; his illustra- 
tions are of the same actual character; he compares the stench of 
Malebolge to the horrible fetor arising from the pest-house in the 
Yald'Arno; his giants are described as so many cubits in height, 
and their size is compared to that of some tower familiar to his 
readers and to himself ; his demons are little else than hideous and 
cruel executioners. Milton, on the contrary, atfects us less (at least 
in his more terrible and sublime delineations) by what he says than 
by what he leaves unsaid. In his lazar-house you see a dim vision 
of agonized motion, and you hear a mingled and inarticulate sound 
of lamentation : — 

"Dire was the tossing, deep the groans;" 
and where Dante would certainly have intensified, so to say, our 
feeling of the reality of the scene, Milton at once soars into abstrac- 
tion : — 

" Despair 

Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch ; 
And over them triumphant Death his dart 
Shook — but delay'd to strike." 

Again, in his mode of portraying immensity of size : Satan stands 

"Like Teneriffe or Atlas, unremoved. 
His stature reach'd the sky, and on his crest 
Sate Horror plumed" — 

a picture which is absolutely Homeric. In Dante, and even more 
universally in Tasso, the terror or the sublimity is of the physical 



CHAP. IX.] 



PARADISE LOST. 



167 



kind, and the impression is produced upon the imagination of the 
reader by the dread fidelity with which the picture is copied from 
some known or fancied reality : their demons have colossal size 
indeed, but they are furnished with the horns, the hoofs, the tails, 
and the talons of the monkish demonology of the Middle Ages : 
Milton's sublimest pictures, on the contrary, have none of this 
material or earthly horror about them, but are terrible thoughts, 
grim abstractions, whose lineaments are veiled and undefined, and 
which are only the more irresistible in the solemn dread they in- 
spire, as they address themselves, so to say, not to the eye, but to 
the imagination : they are fragments of the primeval dark, passion- 
less, formless, terrible. Speaking of Death, he says, — 

" The other Shape, 
If shape it might be call'd, that shape had none 
Distinguishable, in member, form, or limb :" 

and again, in the same passage, which all the critics have agreed in 
calling one of the most wonderful embodiments of supernatural 
terror which ever was conceived by poet, — 

"What seemed his head 
The likeness of a kingly crown had on," 

In these and many other passages the poet seems perpetually on the 
point of giving way to that tendency so natural in the human mind, 
to describe ; but his genius puts a bridle upon the realizing power, 
and the dread image is left in the awful vagueness of its mystery, 
becoming, like the veiled Isis, a thousand times more august and 
terrible from the cloud that shuts it from our eyes. The greatest 
of all poets, Homer, jS]schylus, Shakspeare, not to mention the 
Hebrew Scriptures, are full of this kind of reticence, by which the 
grandeur of the object is rendered more terrible by the gloom and 
indefiniteness which surround it : when the Grreeks are marching to 
the battle, glory blazes in their van like an unwearied fire. What 
tremendous ideas are conjured up by Shakspeare's single line — 

"To be worse than worst, 
Of those that lawless and uncertain thoughts 
Imagine howling" ! 

Everything in nature and in art which is supereminently grand 
will invariably be found to be at the same time simple in the 
extreme ] and, in looking through the whole history of mankind for 
a subject worthy of his genius, Milton selected, most fortunately for 
posterity, the event which of all others was the grandest in itself, 
and at the same time possessed of the most universal and eternal 
interest to the whole human race — the Creation and the Fall of Man. 
We say fortunately, for we know that he long hesitated as to what 
subject he should choose: — '^Time serves not now, and perhaps I 



168 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. IX. 



might seem too profase, to give any certaia account of what the 
mind at home, in the spacious circuits of her musing, hath liberty 
to propose to herself, though of highest hope and hardest attempting. 
. . . And lastly, what king or knight before the conquest might be 
chosen in whom to lay the pattern of a Christian hero." From 
various passages of his works it is clear that he had meditated taking 
as the subject of a great epic, among others, the half-fabulous adven- 
tures of Arthur, and throughout all his poems are scattered number- 
less allusions exhibiting his profound acquaintance with, and deep 
admiration for, all the treasures of mediaeval romantic literature : — 

" And what resounds 
In fable or romance of Uther's son, 
Begirt with British and Armoric knights; 
And all who since, baptised or infidel, 
Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, 
Darnasco, or Morocco, or Trebisond, 
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore, 
When Charlemain with all his peerage fell 
By Fontarabia." 

No language that we could use would be sufficiently strong to 
express the extent and exactness of this writer's learning ; a word 
which we use in its largest and most comprehensive sense : no species 
of literature, no language, no book, no art or science seems to have 
escaped his curiosity, or resisted the combined ardour and patience 
of his industry. His works may be considered as a vast arsenal of 
ideas drawn from every region of human speculation, and either 
themselves the condensed quintessence of knowledge and wisdom, 
or dressing and adorning the fairest and most majestic conceptions. 
If Shakspeare's immortal dramas are like the rich vegetation of a 
primeval paradise, in which all that is sweet, healing, and beautiful 
springs up uncultured from a virgin soil, the productions of Milton 
may justly be compared to one of those stately and magnificent 
gardens so much admired in a former age, in which the perceptible 
art and regularity rather sets off and adorns nature — a stately solitude 
perfumed by the breath of all home-born and exotic flowers, with 
lofty and airy music ever and anon floating through its moonlit soli- 
tudes, decorated by the divine forms of antique sculpture — now a 
G-race, a Cupid, or a Nymph of Phidias ; now a prophet or a Sibyl 
of Michael Angelo. 

In his delineation of what was perhaps the most difficult portion 
of his vast picture, the beauty, purity, and innocence of our first 
parents, he has shown not only a fertility of invention, but a severe 
and Scriptural purity of taste as surprising as it is rare. His Adam 
and Eve, without ceasing for a moment to be human, are beings 
worthy of the Paradise they inhabit. In the portraiture of their 
primeval beauty — the primeval perfection, fresh from the hand of 
Grod — there can be no doubt that the poet has embodied the impres- 



CHAP. IX.] 



PAEADISE LOST. 



169 



sions left on his mind by the contemplation of the great monuments 
of art which he had seen in Italy, and which he so well knew how 
to appreciate. The relics of ancient sculpture gave him in all pro- 
bability something of their severe simplicity of outline, while the 
pictures of Raphael may have communicated the sweetness, grace, 
and heavenly expression of his supernatural and earthly personages. 

But of all the arts which have left their spirit to live and glow 
through the undying pages of 'Paradise Lost,' music is the one 
whose influence is most intensely and uninterruptedly felt. Of the 
power of music Milton held a most exalted idea; partly, perhaps, 
because its pure and ethereal pleasures were most in accordance with 
the heroic and celestial character of his mind ; partly because it was 
the art which he had himself most successfully cultivated; and 
partly, too, no doubt, because it was the only art which his blindness, 
during a great portion of his life, left him the possibility of enjoying 
otherwise than in memory. The Paradise of Dante is composed of 
the two ideas of light and music ; and in Milton, though less exclu- 
sively brought forward, music may be said to be the living spirit 
animating and pervading every creation of his genius. It is music 
which breathes in every changing harmony of his intricate and lofty 
versification ; it is music which composes the noblest passages in his 
Heaven and his Paradise; it is music, too, which forms the only 
contrast with the hopeless agonies of his Hell : not the trivial and 
sensuous music of modern days, but those solemn and majestic har- 
monies which were so honoured in the religious and philosophical 
systems of ancient Greece, and which are perhaps not imperfectly 
reflected in the grand compositions of Paesiello, of Handel, and of 
Beethoven ; — 

"The Dorian mood 
Of flutes and soft recorders ; such as raised 
To height of noblest temper heroes old 
Arming to battle ; and, instead of rage, 
Deliberate valour breathed, firm and unmoved; 
Nor wanting power to mitigate and 'suage, 
With solemn touches, troubled thoughts, and chase 
Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow, and pain, 
From mortal or immortal minds." 

The noble and reverential criticism of Campbell is at once so 
complete and so condensed, that it will not, we think, be inappro- 
priate to quote some passages of it in this place : nothing can be 
better or more discriminating : — 

*' Milton has certainly triumphed over one difficulty of his subject, 
the paucity and the loneliness of its human agents; for no one in 
contemplating the garden of Eden would wish to exchange it for a 
more populous world. His earthly pair could only be represented, 
during their innocence, as beings of simple enjoyment and negative 
virtue, with no other passions than the fear of Heaven and the love 



170 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. IX. 



of eacli other. Yet from these materials what a picture has he drawn 
of their homage to the Deity, their mutual affection^ and the horrors 
of their alienation I * * * * 

" In the angelic warfare of the poem Milton has done whatever 
human genius could accomplish. * * * ^ The warlike part 
of 'Paradise Lost' was inseparable from its subject. I feel too 
strong a reverence for Milton to suggest even the possibility that he 
could have improved his poem by having thrown his angelic warfare 
into more remote perspective; but it seems to me to be most sublime 
when it is least distinctly brought home to the imagination. What 
an awful effect has the dim and undefined conception of the conflict 
which we gather from the opening of the First Book ! There the 
ministers of divine vengeance and pursuit had been recalled — the 
thunders had ceased 

"To bellow through the vast and boundless deep;" 

and our terrific conception of the past is deepened by its indis- 
tinctness. 

" The array of the fallen angels in hell, the unfurling of the 
standard of Satan, and the march of his troops; all this human pomp 
and circumstance of war — all this is magic and overwhelming illusion. 
The imagination is taken by surprise. But the noblest efforts of 
language are tried with very unequal effect to interest us in the 
immediate and close view of the battle itself in the Sixth Book ; and 
the martial demons, who charmed us in the shades of hell, lose some 
portion of . their sublimity when their artillery is discharged in the 
daylight of heaven." 

Another circumstance of admirable originality and effect in the 
supernatural delineations of the * Paradise Lost' is the singular 
felicity with which Milton has given variety and interest to the per- 
sonages of his fallen angels, by considering them as the demons 
afterwards destined to mislead mankind under the guise of the deities 
of classical mythology. The idea of the ancient oracles being the 
inspiration of infernal spirits, permitted for a time to delude the 
world, is not, it is true, originally Milton's ; he found it pervading 
all the chivalrous and monkish legends of the Middle Ages ; and 
though many poets have adopted a notion so admirably calculated to 
communicate poetical effect, and so well uniting Paganism with 
Christianity, none of them — not even Tasso, or our own Spenser — 
have made such noble or such frequent use of this powerful means 
of exciting interest in a Christian work. 

In the companion work to his immortal epic, in the 'Paradise 
Regained' — the 'Odyssey' to our Christian 'Iliad' — 'the first thing 
that strikes the reader is the unfortunate selection of the subject, 
and the general inferiority and weaker interest which marks the 
execution. Neither Milton, nor any human being who ever lived, 



CHAP. IX.] 



MILTON S MINOR POEMS. 



171 



could have done justice to the only subject worthy of forming a 
pmdantj or complement, to the tale 

" Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
Of that forbidden tree." 

The subject to which we allude is, of course, the Crucifixion of our 
Saviour — the only event recorded in past, or possible in future times, 
of an interest sufficiently powerful, universal, and external, to be 
placed in comparison with the Fall of Man. Much as we may regret 
that Milton's peculiar and not very well-understood opinions respect- 
ing the di\dne nature of Christ, and the completeness of the sacrifice 
of the Redemption, induced him to select for the principal action of 
the ' Paradise Regained/ not the awful consummation of that sacri- 
fice on the Mount of Calvary, but rather a comparatively unimportant 
incident in the earthly career of the Redeemer — the Temptation in 
the desert — it may be doubted whether even Milton's sublime genius 
could have worthily represented to mortal eyes that terrible crisis in 
the destiny of man. Sublime as were the flights of that eagle genius 
— ^and what intellect ever soared 

"With plume so strong, so equal, and so soft," 

into the loftiest empyrean of poetry, the unshadowed glory of heaven's 
eternal atmosphere, the flower-breathing air of primeval Eden, or the 
" thick darkness'^ of hell ? — it must have flagged — even that mighty 
and tireless pinion — in the gloom and thunder-cloud that veiled the 
more than human agonies of the Cross ! 

Of some of the minor works of Milton we have already said a 
few words. On those which we have left unnoticed it will hardly be 
necessary to dilate much more. The merit of these productions con- 
sists so much more peculiarly in the manner than in the matter, and 
they derive so much of their charm from their tone and mode of 
treatment, that a mere analysis would utterly fail in giving any idea 
of their excellences; while the reader may obtain from a single 
perusal of any of them, a much clearer notion of their style than 
from the most laboured and critical panegyric. They all bear the 
stamp of the Miltonic mind — fulness, conciseness, a pure and Scrip- 
tural severity and dignity, and the most consummate grace and variety 
of versification. 

In ' Samson Agonistes,' Milton has given us in English a perfect 
Sophoclean tragedy, in which every minutest peculiarity of the Attic 
scene is so faithfully and exactly reproduced, that a reader unac- 
quainted with the G-reek language will form a much more just and 
correct notion of classical tragedy from reading the 'Samson' than 
from studying even the finest and most accurate translations of the 
great dramas of the Athenian theatre. This may appear extravagant, 
L:iy, even paradoxical; but we speak advisedly. The Greek trage- 
1-i * 



172 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. 



[CHAP. X. 



dies were grand historical compositions, founded upon the traditional 
or mythologic legends of the people for whom they were written, 
and whose religious and patriotic feelings were in the highest degree 
appealed to by what they considered as a sacred and affecting repre- 
sentation ; exactly as the rude audience of the Middle Ages had 
their sensibilities powerfully excited by the mysteries. The Greek 
dramas were, in fact, the mysteries and miracle-plays of the Pagan 
world, and differed from those of the thirteenth century only in their 
greater polish and refinement as compositions. Now, the legends of 
classical mythology necessarily affect no less than the stories of the 
Scripture history; and consequently the 'Samson' (being in all points 
of structure and arrangement an exact facsimile of a Greek tragedy) 
produces upon us, Christians, an effect infinitely more analogous to 
that made upon an Athenian by a tragedy of Sophocles than could 
be produced by our reading the best mere translation of a tragedy 
of Sophocles that the skill of man ever executed. 

In ' Comus' Milton has given us the most perfect and exquisite 
specimen of a masque, or rather he has given us a kind of ennobled 
and glorified masque. The refinement, the elegance, the courtly 
grace and chivalry — all is there ; but there is something in ' Comus' 
better, loftier, and grander than all this — something which no other 
masques, with all their refined, and scholarlike, and airy elegance, 
have ever approached — a high and philosophic vein of morality : — 

" Divine philosophy, 
Not harsh and rugged, as dull fools suppose, 
But musical as is Apollo's lute;" 

deep and grand thoughts fetched from the exhaustless fountains of 
the great minds of old — his beloved Plato and the Stagyrite — thoughts 
fresh with the immortality of their birthplace. 



CHAPTER X. 

BUTLER AND DRYDEN. 

The Commonwealth and the Restoration — Milton and Butler — Subject and 
Nature of Hudibras — Hudibras and Don Quixote — State of Society at the 
Restoration — Butler's Life — John Dryden — French Taste of the Court — 
Comedies and Rhymed Tragedies — Life and Works of Dryden — Dramas — 
Annus Mirabilis — Absalom and Achitophel— Religio Laici — Hind and 
Panther — Dryden's later Works — Translation of Virgil — Odes — Fables — 
Prefaces and Dedications — Juvenal — Mac Flecknoe. 

The great productions of literature may be looked at under two 
different aspects or relations. -Every illustrious name in letters may 
be considered as typifying and expressing some great and strongly 



CHAP. X.] 



BUTLER : HIS HUDIBRAS. 



173 



marked epoch in tlie history of man in general, and also as the off- 
spring and embodiment of some- particular era, or some peculiar state 
of feeling existing in the nation of which that name is an ornament : 
that is to say, criticism may be general or particular, cosmopolite or 
national. Thus Milton, viewed as a colossal intellect, without any 
reference to his particular century or country, may be looked upon 
as the type and offspring of the Reformation and of the republican 
spirit combined ; regarded with reference to England and the seven- 
teenth century, he will be found to embody the Commonwealth — 
that stirring and extraordinary period of British history, when the 
united influences of those two mighty phenomena were acting on a 
stage sufficiently limited, and during a period sufficiently short, to 
enable us to form a clear and well-defined idea of their character. 
The period at which Milton wrote was, as we have seen, a period of 
vehement struggle between powerful and opposite principles : and if 
in the illustrious author of ' Paradise Lost ' we find the eloquent 
assertor of the liberty of the press, and the uncompromising advocate 
for democratic forms of government, we cannot be surprised if we 
behold, in the ranks of the royalist party, a mighty champion of 
monarchy, and an irresistible satirist of the follies and vices of the 
republicans. This champion, this satirist, is Samuel Butler, perhaps 
the greatest master who ever lived of the comic or burlesque species 
of satiric writing — a strange and singular genius, whose powers of 
ridicule were as incomparable as the story of his life is melancholy. 
In point of learning, vast, multifarious, and exact, he was no unwor- 
thy rival of Milton : in originality of conception and brilliancy of 
form his work is unequalled ; indeed, ' Huclibras ^ is one of those 
productions which may be said to stand alone in literature. It is 
not to be denied that the reputation obtained out of England by this 
extraordinary work is by no means commensurate with its real merit 
as an effort of genius and originality, or with the vast store of wisdom 
and of wit contained in its pages ; nor is it even probable that this 
indifference to its merits will ever at any future period be less than 
it has hitherto been, or than it is at present. It arises from a very 
natural cause. The subject of Butler's satire was too local and 
temporary to command that degree of attention in other countries, 
without which the highest powers of humour and imagination will 
have been exerted in vain. It is undoubtedly true that the vices, 
the crimes, the follies so pitilessly ridiculed in ' Hudibras' are com- 
mon to mankind in almost every state of civilized society; but we 
must no less remember that some of the more prominent of them 
never burst forth into so full a bloom of absurdity and extravagance 
as they did at the memorable epoch of English history which he has 
caricatured. The Commonwealth and the Protectorate form a revo- 
lutionary epoch, and, like all epochs of revolution, were fertile in 
strong contrasts of political and social physiognomy. Such periods, 



174 



OUTLINES or GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. X. 



acting, as tbey so powerfully do, upon the manners of a people, are 
admirably suited for the purposes of the satiric poet. At such times 
the elements of faction, the extravagances of opinion, of sentiment, 
of manners, of costume, are brought prominently out upon the sur- 
face of society, and present themselves, so to say, in a condensed and 
tangible form, which the satirist has only to copy to produce a vivid 
and striking picture — fortunate, too, if a future age, free from these 
violent agitations and strong contrasts, does not charge him with 
exaggeration, and mistake the grotesque but faithful delineations of 
his pencil for the sportiveness of caricature. Curious as they are to 
the moral speculator, and full of matter to the studious searcher into 
the history of party, the absurdities of that legion of fanatical sects 
by whom the destinies of England were then swayed are neither 
sufficiently attractive or picturesque in themselves, nor sufficiently 
well known to the general European reader, for Butler's admirable 
pictures of them to be generally studied or understood out of Eng- 
land; for with political satire, no less than political caricature, much 
of the point of the jest is lost to those who are not able to judge of 
the likeness. 

It may be objected that, to the great body of English readers, the 
very considerable time that has elapsed since the occurrences took 
place which Butler has ridiculed, and the total disappearance of the 
things and the men represented in his poem, must have rendered 
them as strange and almost as unintelligible as they are to the non- 
English reader, from remoteness of place as well as distance of time, 
and dissimilarity of manners, customs, and sentiments. This is un- 
doubtedly true to some extent : but the intensely idiomatic spirit of 
this excellent writer has given to his work a sap and a vitality which 
no obsoleteness of subject could destroy. An immense number of 
his verses have passed into the ordinary everyday language of his 
countrymen : containing, as they often do, the condensed thought of 
proverbs, they have fixed themselves on the memory of the people 
by their proverb-like oddity and humour of expression, and often by 
the quaint jingle of their rhymes. Thus multitudes of Butler's 
couplets float loosely in the element of ordinary English dialogue, 
and are often heard from the mouths of men who are themselves 
ignorant of the source of these very expressions, and who possibly 
hardly know that such a poet as Butler and such a poem as ' Hudi- 
bras' ever existed. The fundamental idea of 'Hudibras' is, in our 
opinion, singularly happy. The title of the poem, which is also the 
name of its hero, is taken from the old romances of chivalry, Sir 
Hugh de Bras being the appellation of one of the knights (an 
Englishman, too, according to the legend) of Arthur's fabulous 
Round Table. Much also of the structure of the poem is a kind 
of burlesque of those ancient romances ; and the very versification 
itself is the rhymed octosyllable so much employed by the Norman 



CHAP. X.] 



butler: hudibras. 



175 



troTiveres, a measure singularly well adapted for continuous and 
easy narrative, and consequently peculiarly fit for burlesque. Of 
comic poetry, part of whose humour consists in a resemblance or 
contrast between a ludicrous imitation and a serious or elevated 
original, there are two principal species. In the one, the characters, 
events, language, and style of a sublime and pathetic work are 

■ retained, but mingled with mean and ludicrous objects ; as when the 
heroes of the 'Iliad' are represented as cowards, gluttons, and 
thieves : and in the other, trivial or ridiculous personages and events 
are described with a pomp of language and an affected dignity of 
style wholly disproportioued to their real importance. The former 
species of writing, it is hardly necessary to say, is called burlesque, 
and the second mocJi-heroic. Of the first kind are the innumerable 
travesties of the ancient poets • and of the second both the French 

giiterature and the English possess excellent specimens, though the 
^Lutrin' is not to be compared to the 'Rape of the Lock.'' Although 
both these kinds of comic writing may appear to have been the off- 
spring of a considerably advanced period of literature, it is neverthe- 
less certain that specimens of them are to be found at an exceedingly 
early epoch — even in the very infancy of poetry in the heroic age, 
and in its second birth or avatar of the romantic or chivalric period 
of the Middle Ages. We need only mention, in proof of our first 
proposition, the ' Battle of the Frogs and Mice,' falsely, it is obvious, 
ascribed to Homer, but still a work of very high antiquity; and 
also we may refer to many of the comedies of Aristophanes. 

As to our second position — that in which we speak of the existence 
in the Middle Ages of this kind of comic writing — it will be neces- 
sary to refer rather more fully to the literature of that early period, 
not only because this section of it is less likely to be familiar to our 
readers, but also because it bears more immediately upon the subject 
in hand — ' Hudibras' being, to a certain degree, a burlesque of the 
tales of chivalry which form the staple of mediaeval literature. We 
have, then, numberless proofs that the solemn, wonderful, and stately 
romance of the trouvere was often parodied, and* that ludicrous and 
burlesque poems were frequently written, for the purpose of exciting 
mirth, in which the stately manners and occupations of the knight were 
represented in connexion with the ignorance, rudeness, and coarse mer- 
riment of the peasant ; somewhat in a similar manner as we find in the 
Attic theatre the terrible and pathetic tragedy made a source of laughter 
in the satiric drama, which is supposed to have formed a part of the 
trilogy of the ancients. Of these latter only one example now exists, in 
the ' Cyclops' of Euripides, an admirable and most laughable jeu 
(V esprit, in which the heroic manners and adventure of Ulysses and 
Polyphemus are evidently travestied from a serious tragic version 
(now lost) of the same adventure, which formed one of the members 
of the same trilogy. Not to speak of the ancient Norman subdivi- 



176 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. X. 



sion of the Romanz poetry, we need not look farther than our own 
country to find several examples of the same kind of humour exist- 
ing in the chivalrous literature of the Middle Ages. And the thing 
is natural enough ; the taste and feeling of the ludicrous, which 
seems innate in the human mind, will find a ready food in the serious 
or elevated productions fashionable in any age or country. Among 
the early English poems to which we have alluded there are two 
which are not only admirable for their oddity and humour, but curious, 
as presenting perfect examples of the principle of which we are 
speaking : these are the ' Tournament of Tottenham' and the '■ Hunt- 
ing of the Hare.' In the former of these singular jeu esprit the 
reader will find a very lively parody of the language, sentiment, 
and usages of the chivalric period. The subject is a solemn tourney, 
or "passage of arms," in which the actors are clowns and peasants 
instead of high-born and gentle knights, and in which the peculia^^ 
terms and ceremonies of these solemn and splendid spectacles are 
most ludicrously burlesqued and misapplied. In the ' Hunting of 
the Hare' the leading idea is nearly similar, with the exception that 
it is not the language and the usages of the tournament which are 
burlesqued by their connexion with the lowest order of the people, 
but the terms and, if we may so style it, the technology of the art 
of venery — an art which was in those ages considered as only second 
in importance to the science of war, which possessed a language of 
its own no less complicated and elaborate, and was, no less than it, 
the peculiar privilege of the nobles. In this curious poem the " base- 
born churls" go out to hunt the hare with all the ceremonies of 
knightly venery : and the poem, which describes their mishaps and 
their ignorant misapplication of terms and customs, produced its 
effect in a similar way to the laughable caricature of military and 
heraldic splendour in the ^ Tournament of Tottenham.' 

" Cervantes laugh'd Spain's chivalry away," 

says Byron; and though it is an error to suppose that the ludicrous 
adventures of the Knight of La Mancha can in any sense be said to 
have destroyed a system which had ceased to exist when Cervantes 
wrote, yet every reader must feel how much of the comic effect of 
this immortal work arises from the strong contrast and want of 
harmony between the Don's peculiar train of ideas and the social 
condition of the times in which he attempts to realise his hallucina- 
tion. So completely indeed had knight-errantry ceased to exist at 
the period when the Don is supposed to set out on his adventures, 
that Cervantes was obliged to adopt the idea of insanity in his hero 
ere he could bring in contact two states of society — two conditions 
of sentiment so incompatible as the chivalric age and the real man- 
ners of his own day. But every one sees how much the ludicrous 
effect is heightened, nay, how completely it proceeds from this forcible 



CHAP. X.3 



HUDIBRAS AND DON QUIXOTE. 



177 



juxtaposition of discordant, periods; for as all true beauty arises, in 
nature and in art, from harmony, so the ludicrous has ever for its 
principal element the incongruous and the discordant. Place Don 
Quixote in the real age of chivalry, surround him with the real 
customs and ideas which his " fine madness'^ has conjured up from 
the past and from the world of imagination, and he ceases to be a 
ludicrous, or even an extraordinary character. 

In ^ Hudibras,' the form of the poem, the versification, and the 
conception of some of the adventures, derive their comic piquancy 
from their resemblance to the solemn tales of Anglo-Norman chivalry. 
The age of knight-errantry is indeed far less prominently brought in 
contrast and opposition with a difi"erent period in Hudibras' than in 
* Don Quixote but it is so brought to a certain degree, and with a 
certain degree of effect : and herein we may perceive a proof of 
Butler's good sense. The manners of Spain when Cervantes lived 
were indeed widely different from those of the chivalric age ; but 
they were not so completely changed but that many relics of chivalry 
still existed in the legends, the songs, and the recollections of the 
people : these existed then, it is obvious, for they exist, to a certain 
extent, down to the present day. But England when Butler wrote, 
England in the civil war and under the Long Parliament, was as 
perfect and absolute a contrast to the chivalric age as the mind of 
man can conceive. Butler therefore contented himself with taking 
from that period certain general outlines for his picture ; the principal 
of which — the idea of representing his hero as setting out, attended 
by his squire, in a garb and an equipment ludicrously caricatured, 
knight-errantlike, to destroy abuses — he undoubtedly took from 
Cervantes. The characters of the Knight of La Mancha and his 
inimitable squire, it should be observed, grotesque as they are, are 
in no sense intended to excite, or capable of exciting, any feeling but 
that of merriment — a merriment which in the case of the former is 
always tempered with respect and pity. The object of Butler was 
dilfercnt : he intended to produce in us a feeling of ridicule and con- 
tempt, and of contempt carried as far towards detestation as was 
compatible with the existence of the ridiculous. And in their respec- 
tive aims, both so different and so diflBcalt, each of these great wits 
has wonderfully succeeded. Cervantes makes you laugh at his 
admirable hero, and yet love him the more you laugh ; while 
Butler causes you to detest Sir Hudibras as much as it is pos- 
sible to detest him without ceasing to laugh. Pity and abhorrence 
are both tragic passions, and consequently, when carried beyond 
certain limits, are destructive of the sense of ridicule : and these 
two great men have each in his peculiar line carried their ludicrous 
character exactly so far as to touch the brink where the comic ceases, 
and where the tragic begins. Butler's object in writing ' Hudibras' 
was to cover the fanatic and republican party with irresistible ridicule ; 



178 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. X. 



/ and in that assemblage of odious and contemptible vices which he 
has, as it were, condensed in the persons of Sir Hudibras and his 
clerk, it is impossible not to see at once the strong though certainly 
exaggerated resemblance between the original and the portrait, and 
the extraordinary genius of the painter. Sir Hudibras, a Presby- 
terian officer and justice of the peace, sets out, attended by his clerk 
Kalph (who is the representative of the Independents), to correct 
abuses, and to enforce the observance of the strict laws lately made 
by the fanatic parliament for the suppression of the sports and amuse- 
ments of the people. In moral and intellectual character, in political 
and religious principles, this worthy pair forms a parallel as just and 
admirable as in grotesque accoutrement, in cowardice, and in para- 
doxical ingenuity. The description of their character, dress, equip- 
ment, and even their horses, is as complete and finished a picture as 
can be conceived : not a single stroke of satire is omitted : they live 
before us a perfect embodiment of everything that is repulsive and 
contemptible. 

Though the lines which distinguish these two personages are 
drawn with a strong, a learned, and a delicate hand, there is too 
great a natural resemblance between the two classes of which Hudi- 
bras and Ralph are the representatives for us to derive from them 
the pleasure we find in Don Quixote, and which arises from the 
happy and humorous contrast between the Don and Sancho. The 
differences between Presbyterian and Independent, Antinomian and 
Fifth-Monarchy-man, were much better known and more easily dis- 
tinguished when Butler wrote than they can be now after so many 
years have tended to confound in one general indistinctness the 
peculiar features which gave individual character to the thousand 
sects then struggling for supremacy, each hating with a fervent 
hatred the Church and the monarchy of England, but abhorring 
each other with fir greater cordiality. But it was not so when 
Butler wrote, and we cannot, therefore, justly complain that a work 
written with a particular and definite purpose of local and tempo- 
rary satire does not possess a greater universality of design than it 
was likely, or indeed possible, it should have. We must remember 
that the vices and follies ridiculed in ^Hudibras,' though they may 
no longer exist under the same forms, yet are inherent in human 
nature; and we may accept this sharp and brilliant satire as an 
attack, not upon the Presbyterian or Independent of 1660, but 
upon pedantry, hypocrisy, upon political and religious fanaticism. 

The plot and adventures of this poem are very slight and unim- 
portant : the butt of the author was the whole Puritan party, and 
he was more likely to render that party ridiculous by what he makes 
his personages say than Jby anything he could make them do. The 
numerous dialogues scattered through the work are, in this respect, 
more powerful means of throAving contempt on the object of the 



CHAP. X.] 



HUDIBRAS: ITS POPULARITY. 



179 



satire than the events ; though many of the latter, as the adventure 
of the bear and fiddle, the imprisonment in the stocks, the self- 
inflicted whipping of the knight, &c. &c., are recounted with great 
gaiety and invention. The learning, the inexhaustible wit, the 
ingenuity, the ever-surprising novelty of the dialogues, forbid us to 
regret, or rather altogether prevent us from perceiving, that the 
intrigue is so imperfect and inartificial as hardly to deserve the 
name of a plot, that the action is inconsistent, and left unfinished at 
the conclusion — if, indeed, the abrupt termination of the poem can 
correctly be called a conclusion — in which nothing is concluded. 

In the interval between the appearance of the first and last cantos 
the- Restoration had taken place, to which Butler had so powerfully 
contributed, and from which he was destined to meet with such 
ingratitude; and consequently many of the topics which he had 
treated with such admirable humour in the first part had become 
obsolete; so that it may be doubted whether Butler could have 
completed his work, or whether the work would have been rendered 
more valuable had he done so. Its success was immense — addressed 
as it was to the strongest prejudices of the royalists, and directed 
against a party whose peculiar vices were unusually well adapted to 
serve as a butt for the satirist. It immediately became the most 
popular book of the time, was quoted and admired by all the 
courtiers, and by the merry king himself, who was certainly able, 
whatever were his deficiencies in more important points, to enjoy 
and appreciate the wit of 'Hudibras/ but who, with that ungrateful 
levity which forms the worst feature of his character, forgot to 
reward the admirable author to whom he owed so much in more 
senses than one. Butler was born in 1612, and, as far as the im- 
perfect notices which we possess of his early career permit us to 
ascertain, he appears to have been recommended (probably by his 
youthful learning) to the Countess of Kent, under whose protection 
he remained some time, enjoying the acquaintance and conversation 
of the wise and excellent Selden. He appears afterwards to have 
passed some time in the service (as clerk or tutor) of Sir Samuel 
Luke, one of Cromwell's officers, and this person is supposed to 
have sat for the portrait of the hero of 'Hudibras.' Butler has 
hence been accused of ingratitude and an odious betrayal of his 
benefactor; but so grave a charge as this deserves, particularly 
when brought against an illustrious genius, a much more conclusive 
degree of proof than the evidence will supply. We must know, 
first, whether Butler was really treated in the family of Sir Samuel 
Luke with kindness sufficient to justify us in giving the name of 
ingratitude to his satirizing of that personage; and, secondly, we 
must have better evidence as to the severity and malice of the 
alleged satire itself than is to be gathered from the very few and 
not very distinct allusions to Sir Samuel occurring in the poem of 



180 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. 



[chap. X. 



' Hudibras.' The rapid and immediate success of Butler's poem of 
course brought him under the notice of the court of the Restoration, 
•whose interests the satire had so powerfully served; and Charles 
presented the author with a sum of 800/., promising to do more 
for him. This promise, however, the king never fulfilled, and the 
great wit, after living in poverty and obscurity a few years longer, 
died in 1680, in a wretched lodging in Covent G-arden, then the 
most miserable and squalid quarter of London. He was even 
indebted to the charity of a friend for a grave, as he did not possess 
sufficient property to pay his funeral expenses ; and it was not till 
some time after his death that this great comic genius received the 
honour of a monument, v^hich was erected, with a laudatory inscrip- 
tion, at the cost of an admirer. This tardy recognition of Butler's 
merit gave origin to one of the acutest epigrams in the English 
language : — 

"Whilst Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive, 
No generous patron would a dinner give : 
See him, when starved to death and turn'd to dust, 
Presented with a monumental bust. 

^he poet's fate is here in emblem shown ; 

(He ask'd for bread, and he received a stone.") 

But the true type of the principles of taste, and the system, not 
only of literature, but even — we may almost say — even of morality 
which were introduced into England at the restoration of the Stuarts, 
is J ohn Dryden, a poet and critic who, if he does not deserve a place 
among the very first and greatest lights of his country's literature, 
yet must always be ranged at the very head of the second class. The 
great revolution in taste to which Mve have just alluded modified to 
a most important extent the whole face and relations of society, and 
so powerful was its influence that its effects are very plainly traceable 
over the whole of that long period of history extending from the 
Restoration to the first French Revolution. In order to appreciate 
and measure the effects of this change, it will be necessary to throw 
a glance upon the nature and causes of its occurrence at this 
particular period ; and in so doing we shall find a new opportunity 
of perceiving how closely and intimately connected are the political 
and literary career of every civilized nation. We have seen, in the 
Elizabethan age, the newly-developed energies of national genius 
bursting forth, under the fostering glow of political grandeur, com- 
mercial prosperity, and great social cultivatton, into the most extra- 
ordinary fertility and productiveness; it was under the wise and 
vigorous sway of that great sovereign that the country first took up 
its position as a prominent member of the great European family. 
The struggles of the Reformation too, however disastrous may have^ 
been their temporary effect, had accustomed the minds of men to 
habits of inquiry, and fortified their intellectual energies by the 



CHAP. X.] 



INFLUENCE OF FRENCH TASTE. 



181 



greatest freedom of discussion exercised upon subjects of the gravest 
and most enduring importance, and, at the same time, the literature 
had not been so far cultivated, nor the principles of taste so far 
established, as to expose the writers of that period to the fatal influ- 
ence of precedent and authority, compelling them (as invariably 
happens in more advanced periods of cultivation) to accept without 
inquiry any set of models from some particular age or country. The 
result of all this was, that those writers (of whom Shakspeare in 
poetry, and Bacon in philosophy, are the most glorious and complete 
examples) possessed in the highest degree the apparently opposite^ 
qualities of originality and good sense. Living as it were in the 
infancy of literature, they brought to the contemplation of the great 
productions of other lands and other ages an eye unhackneyed and 
fresh, enabling them to perceive the beauties of nature and of art 
with a sensibility and a relish arising from novelty ; and at the same 
time they were cramped and enslaved in their own productions by 
none of those timid systems which are founded upon the supposed 
necessity of imitating some particular models. That character of 
freshness, earnestness, and intensity, which marks the thoughts of 
childhood, is stamped also upon the productions of the infancy of 
literature ; the thoughts of men at such a period have not lost their 
bloom — the dew is still upon them. 

The English nation, exhausted with incessant agitation, and wearied 
of endless and unprofitable dissensions in religion, hailed with rapture 
the return of their exiled king, and foresaw in a re-establishment of 
monarchy a pledge for stability, for peace, and for prosperity. In 
the ardour of triumphant loyalty, they looked forward to " Saturnian 
days,'^ and expected that with a restored throne would be restored 
also the ancient nationality and modes of thought of the English 
people. But these hopes were destined, as might indeed have been 
foreseen, to be disappointed. The exiled king, and the little court 
which accompanied him in all his wanderings, had lost much of the 
spirit of nationality. Pensioners on the bounty of foreign states, 
Charles and his personal adherents had rubbed clF, by their friction 
with the men and the customs of other countries, much of that ex- 
ternal shell of habits and manners which, if not the most valuable 
and essential part of patriotism, is yet an excellent protection and 
bond to the love of country. The exiled royalists too, no more than 
their " merry, poor, and scandalous" chief, could not be supposed to 
entertain feelings of very deep devotion to that country which had 
banished them for so long, and to which they were restored mainly 
through foreign interference and intrigues of foreign jealousy; for it 
may safely be said that most of the nations of Europe had watched 
with envy and distrust the rapid career, so brilliant and so short, of 
republican England. 

In considering how far these circumstances were likely to affect 



182 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. X. 



the merely literary tastes and predilections of tlie restored court, we 
must not forget that the great productions of earlier and more 
splendid epochs of English literary history had grown obsolete, if 
not even unintelligible ; for we find Dryden, an ardent, if not very 
enlightened admirer of Shakspeare, complaining that the writings 
of the greatest of our dramatists had become little read from the 
difficulty and antiquated expression of his style. Moreover, the 
English literature was at the period of which we are speaking abso- 
lutely unknown to the rest of Europe — a circumstance for which it 
is easy enough to find a reason. The French nation was, at the 
epoch of Louis XIY., the one which had reached the highest point 
of civilization then attained by any European state : her influence, 
not only political and military, but even intellectual also, was pre- 
dominant ; she dictated the fashion, not only in all minor matters 
of dress, amusement, and behaviour, but in literature and art. 
Parisian practice, and the court of the Grrand Monarque, was a juris- 
diction from which there was no appeal, and its decisions were held 
to be equally irreversible, whether they settled the principles of 
poetry or the arrangement of a sword-knot, the laying out of a gar- 
den or the rules of the drama. Now, of all the European nations 
which have at any period of their existence attained to some degree 
of eminence in letters, France is incontestably the one which has the 
least catholicity of taste, the least sympathy with what differs from 
her received ideas. This arises, in some measure, from the unity 
which characterises French society, and from the political causes 
which have always made Paris the centre and focus of French nation- 
ality. Some portion of the effect may have been produced, too, by 
the inherent poverty of the French language, and by the sudden and 
rapid progress which the literature made towards excellence — the 
cultivation of the field being in direct proportion to the narrowness 
of its limits. Lastly, we must not omit from our calculation the 
restless and insatiable vanity which incontestably forms a prominent 
feature in the French character; and we cannot, we think, long 
wonder either at the industry and activity with which all the French 
critics maintained the supposed superiority of their national literature 
over that of every other European country, or at the complete success 
which their efforts so long secured. That, therefore, the English 
royalists should have returned from exile with all their predilections 
enlisted in favour of French literature, can be no matter of surprise 
to us. What could have been the opinion of a gay and ignorant 
cavalier respecting the ' Comus,' for instance, of Milton, or the 
^ Paradise Lost ? ' And if he could in no sense sympathise with or 
understand (as it was next to impossible that he could) the grave 
and profound loveliness which characterises the works of the great 
Puritan poet, how very dim and imperfect must have been his im- 
pressions of Chaucer, of Spenser, of Shakspeare I The consequence 



CHAP. X.] LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION. 



183 



of all this was, that there was introduced into England at the Resto- 
ration, not merely a ditFerence of tone affecting the general character 
of the literature, but new models and new forms of composition. 
The court too, and the society of the metropolis, now began to exer- 
cise a more powerful influence, particularly on the lighter departments 
of literature; and the manners of that court being exceedingly 
corrupt and profligate, a deeply-seated taint of immorality was com- 
municated to the social intercourse of the age, which required no 
short period of time, and no small exertion of good taste, good man- 
ners, and religion, entirely to purge away. Indeed this corruption 
was not entirely eradicated, either from manners or from literature, 
till the time of Addison. The court thus giving the tone and key- 
note to the metropolis, and the metropolis to the nation, we cannot 
be surprised to see that a gay and witty profligacy characterises theT 
lighter literature of this time ; and that a certain worldliness, and a 
perfect acquaintance with the surface of fashionable society, should 
be the prevailing spirit of the day. The nation, disgusted with the 
long faces and longer prayers of the fanatics, and suddenly freed from 
their absurd and odious restrictions, now rushed to the opposite ex- 
treme : debauchery was considered as identified with loyalty, and 
oaths, and deep draughts, and a gay contempt for all the decencies 
of social life, were, as it were, the badges and insignia of a good 
cavalier. Men are but too apt in all cases to find pretexts for their 
vices in what is in itself laudable and excellent • and in the present 
case the follies naturally accompanying the triumph of the royalist 
party were fostered and encouraged by the scandalous example of 
immorality set by the court itself. The king, to whom proscription 
and misfortune had taught neither gratitude nor propriety, who had 
returned from exile, like the members of another royal house in our 
own days, "without having learned and without having forgotten 
anything,^' appears to have possessed no one good quality but that 
of a certain good-natured easiness of temper; and his reign is equally 
memorable for internal disorder and for external weakness and pusil- 
lanimity. Now what are the literary features which such an epoch 
as we have been describing, and such a state of society, might natu- 
rally be expected to possess ? Assuredly we should look for no great 
manifestations of creative genius, for no delineations of tragic passion, 
for no profound and immortal embodiments of human nature : but 
satire would flourish, and that kindred species of composition, the 
comedy of manners or intrigue — that satire (the Horatian, not the 
Juvenalian kind) which skims lightly over the surface of society, 
and rather wittily ridicules bad taste, bad manners, and folly, than 
sternly lashes vice or crime ; and that comedy which confines itself 
solely to the external absurdities of society, and therefore but a por- 
trait or a caricature of a particular age : not the comedy which 
peneti'ates into the profoundest recesses of human character, repre- 
15* 



184 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CIIAP. X. 



senting in lively colours, not an epoch, but humanity itself. Tragedy 
they had, and in abundance but it was a tragedy in the highest 
degree artificial — an exaggerated copy of the already exaggerated 
imitations of Corneille and of Racine. At a period when society 
had lost all real dignity of manner and all true intensity and earnest- 
ness of tone, it had lost also all sympathy with natural feeling, and 
all sense for simple passion : and as the convulsive distortions of 
weakness and disease may at first sight be mistaken for the activity 
of healthy vigour, the dramatic audiences of that time were content 
to accept fantastic extravagance for sublimity, and an effeminate 
affectation for tenderness. To sickly and enervated palates, simple 
food is tasteless and loathsome ; and the unnatural rants of a false 
■and impossible heroism were applauded by the countrymen of Shak- 
speare and of Jonson. This was the age of rhymed tragedies: in 
the eagerness to imitate the whole form and structure of the French 
classical tragedy, they copied not only what was unimportant, but 
also what was defective. They forgot that the English language 
possessed examples of the highest perfection of harmony as a medium 
of dramatic dialogue ; and they servilely followed the metrical system 
of their French models, a system essentially based upon the unme- 
trical character of the French language. Nor did they stop here : 
they found it necessary to copy also the artificial and exaggerated 
tone of the sentiments, the supernatural and impossible elevation of 
the characters, and to throw over the whole composition the tint of 
courtly and fantastic gallantry, which accords so ill with the real 
manners of those epochs (the heroic age of antiquity in particular), 
from which they generally selected the subject of their plays. Their 
heroes are no longer men and women, but glittering puppets, dressed 
up in a collection of contradictory virtues, placed upon the stage to 
declaim long tirades of artificial and exaggerated sentiment : and, 
possessing no intrinsic claims on the sympathy of the spectator (for 
who can sympathise with a phantom — an abstraction ?) they were 
represented as performing prodigies of impossible^ valour, and making 
sacrifices of not less impossible generosity. 

In this degenerate age, however, of our literature, England pro- 
duced one man who, though deeply tinged with the stains of his 
age and country, yet deserved and obtained, by the innate nobility 
and grandeur of his genius, one of the highest places among the 
great men of his country. This was John Dryden. He was 
descended from an ancient Northamptonshire family, and was born 
in August, 1631. Though the father of the poet was a man of 
rigid Puritan principles, the future critic and satirist received a good 
and even learned education, first at Westminster School, and after- 
wards at Trinity College, Cambridge. Though his first poetical 
efforts were devoted to the celebration of the republican chief of 
England, he very soon utterly abandoned the party and opinions of 



CHAP. X.] 



DKYDEN : HIS LIFE AND WORKS. 



185 



the Comrxionwealtli, so uncongenial to the character and ambition of 
Dryden, who was essentially the poet of the court and of social life; 
and we find him among those who welcomed with the most enthu- 
siasm the restoration of the monarchy. The stage being, as we 
have already intimated, the most fashionable, and perhaps also the 
most lucrative arena for literary ambition at this time, Dryden be- 
came an industrious candidate for dramatic glory, and he now began 
that career of writing for the stage which continued with little inter- 
ruption during his whole life. Among the first plays which he 
wrote are 'The Wild G-allant,' 'The Rival Ladies,' and 'The Indian 
Emperor;' but this department of his works it will be needless to 
particularize, as they are now little read, in spite of passages of 
great occasional merit, and even many noble scenes of a highly 
eloquent and declamatory cast. These remarks, however, apply 
solely to the tragedies, for Dryden, great as were his powers of 
satire, can hardly be said to have possessed a spark of humour ; and 
humour is the essence and life-blood of comedy. The truth is, that 
his comedies were written less in compliance with the natural bent 
of his genius than to obey the taste of the day, and, like most men 
who do not possess the vis comica^ he seems to have invariably mis- 
taken buffoonery for comic wit, and coarse unblushing profligacy for 
comic intrigue. His comedies are, in short, equally stupid and 
contemptible, and it is but a melancholy excuse for the errors of 
such an intellect as Dryden 's to allege the corruption of the society 
of his day, or the force of poverty, as palliating what is equally an 
offence against morality and good manners. In his tragedies there 
is much more to admire and far less to blame — a freedom and 
vigour of expression, a masculine energy of thought, and an inex- 
haustible flow of the purest English, harmonized by a versification 
which, for ease, abundance, richness, and variety, has never been 
equalled in the language. The characters in his dramas are all 
reproductions of the scanty repertory of the French scene; his 
heroes push courage and generosity to the verge of madness and 
impossibility ; his heroines are little else than eloquent viragos ; and 
each class of personages has a tinge of the fantastic and exaggerated 
gallantry which had its origin in the system of chivalry, and which 
was carried to its highest degree of absurdity in the interminable 
romances of the school of Scuderi; and his tyrants rant and blas- 
pheme secundum artem, in sounding tirades which nothing could 
render tolerable but the sonorous and majestic versification. The 
truth is, that the genius of this great poet was essentially undra- 
matic. As he wanted all perception of true humour in comedy, so 
in tragedy he was completely deficient in that sentiment (so nearly 
akin to humour) without which tragedy becomes nothing but decla- 
mation in dialogue — pathos. But his real sphere was lyric, 
didactic, and satiric poetry, and in these kinds of writing the 



186 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. 



[CHAP. X. 



qualities wliich we have described him as possessing — perhaps no 
poet ever possessed them in so high a degree — shine out in full 
and unmingled lustre. In 1667 he published 'Annus Mirabilis/ a 
poem of considerable length, written to commemorate the events of 
the preceding year, which were indeed remarkable enough to justify 
the title; — among the rest, the great fire of London, and a des- 
perate action between the Dutch and English fleets. In this noble 
work he made use of a species of versification (imitated, it is sup- 
posed, from Davenant) which was peculiarly qualified to exhibit his 
mastery over the language, and his consummate power of expressing 
ordinary thoughts in varied and majestic numbers. It is written in 
stanzas of four heroic lines^ alternately rhymed, and, though de- 
formed by occasional false thoughts and extravagances, by marks of 
haste and hurry, and injured (as are most of Dryden's compositions) 
by a tone of adulation and flattery unworthy a great man, it must 
ever be considered as a work of extraordinary merit. The publica- 
tion of this vigorous work immediately placed Dryden in the first 
rank of the poets of his time ; and he made an engagement with 
the king's players to supply them with three plays a-year — a task 
for which he possessed few qualifications excepting a remarkable 
boldness and prolific fluency of mind, and an inexhaustible supply 
of rich and varied versification. He was about this period appointed 
poet laureate and historiographer to the king, which ofiice, together 
with his share in the profits of the theatre, amounting to about 300/. 
a-year, afforded him a fixed revenue of at least 700Z. This must be 
considered as the most prosperous and flourishing period of Dryden's 
existence ; but he soon became involved in controversies and squab- 
bles with other literary men, and particularly with Elkanah Settle, 
a wretched scribbler of that day, placed in opposition to Dryden 
partly by the bad taste of the time, and partly by the ingenious 
malice of the witty and profligate E,ochester. These literary 
quarrels embittered the life of the great poet ; and though we may 
in some sense be said to owe to them several of the finest satiric 
productions of Dryden's muse, we cannot but regret that his power- 
ful energies were in so many instances unworthily employed in 
consigning to an immortality of scorn names which but for him would 
have been long forgotten, and thus embalming in the brilliant and 
indestructible amber of his satire the lice and beetles of contempo- 
rary literature. 

In 1681 Dryden published the splendid satirical poem of ' Absa- 
lom and Achitophel.' In this noble production, under a thin and 
transparent veil of Biblical names and Scriptural allusions, we have 
a most powerful description of the political intrigues of the Duke of 
Monmouth and his party, and admirably drawn characters of the 
principal public men of that time; indeed it is the force, variety, and 
comprehensiveness of the characters which give the work its value in 



CHAP. X.] 



ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 



187 



the eyes of modern readers — a value which it can never lose. In 
satire it is obvious that a degree of epigrammatic point in the delinea- 
tion of characters is as essential an excellence as the same qualityj 
of brilliant discriminative opposition would be a defect in the drama 
or in the romance ; and thus Dryden's admirable skill in this kind 
of moral portrait-painting absolutely rendered his dramatic personages 
mere abstractions, rather artificial combinations of distinct qualities 
than real human beings. Not even in the elegant gallery of the 
Horatian satire, nor in the darker and more tragic pictures of Juvenal, 
can we find any delineations, admirable though they be, equal in 
vigour, lifelikeness, and intensity of colouring, to the rich and mag- 
nificent collection of portraits given in ' Absalom and Achitophel '/ 
most of them have been impressed indelibly upon the memory of 
ev^ry reader of English poetry : we may mention, among others, 
the characters of Zimri (the Duke of Buckingham), of Achitophel 
(the Earl of Shaftesbury), of Corah (the infamous Gates), and in 
the second part the masterly descriptions of Settle and Shadwell, his 
chief personal antagonists, under the names of Doeg and Og. It 
should be remarked, that the second part of this striking poem was 
written, not by Dryden himself, but by Tate under his direction, 
and that the former's share in it (with the exception of " several 
touches in other places") was confined to the two latter characters. 
It is, however, but just to the much calumniated genius of Tate to 
say, that his part of the poem is not unworthy of his great collabora- 
tor, and that his style is hardly to be distinguished, in this work, 
from that of the master. It is true that we know not how far the 
pencil of Dryden may have left its powerful touches on the canvas 
of the inferior artist. This work, like all Dryden's satires, narrative 
compositions, and the dialogue of his tragedies, is written in the 
rhymed heroic couplet of ten syllables : a measure which Dryden 
must be considered as having carried to the highest perfection of 
which it was capable. It is a species of versification exceedingly 
difiicult to write with effect, particularly in a long composition, the 
structure of this metrical system causing a tendency to complete the 
sense at the end of each pair of lines or couplet, and thus being 
peculiarly liable to degenerate into monotony. But Dryden, by a 
diligent study of the great models in this kind of versification, and 
particularly of the works of Chaucer (one of the most harmonious 
of our poets), learned to surpass all who had gone before him in the 
qualities of vigour, sonorousness, and variety ; and he knew how, by 
the occasional introduction of a triplet (or three lines rhyming 
together) and the skilful use of the Alexandrine (of twelve syllables) 
at the end of a paragraph, to break the uniformity of the couplet, 
and to give to his versification that 

"Long-resounding march, and energy divine," 
which is the peculiar characteristic of his poetry. 



188 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. X. 



He possessed in a higher degree than all our other poets, as J ohn- 
son justly remarks, the "art of reasoning in verse/' and he well 
knew that he possessed this rare faculty : his mind was rather ratio- 
einative than impressionable ; he possessed but feeble sympathy with 
nature, and no tenderness at all ; in poetical argument, therefore, in 
invective, in the delineation of characters of artificial life, he was 
inimitable. Nor was he less impressive in a higher sphere — that of 
moral or religious controversy — what may be called poetical polemics. 
He has left us two noble works of this nat\ire, the ^ Religio Laici,' 
and ' The Hind and Panther,' — works which neither the un poetical 
nature of their subjects, nor the occasional false reasonings and 
sophistries which may be detected in them, can prevent us from con- 
sidering as among the noblest efforts of human intellect ever embodied 
in majestic verse. The first is a defence of the Church of England 
against the Dissenters ; and in spite of the local nature of its theme, 
and the tone of scepticism as to revealed religion which is but too 
perceptible in many parts, it contains passages in the highest strain 
of Dryden's peculiar excellences. The other is an attempt made by 
Dryden to justify, under the form of a fable, his recent secession 
from the English Church which he had so powerfully defended, and 
whose dogmas he now relinquished for those of Romanism. This 
event took place about the period of the accession of James II., and 
Dryden was exposed in consequence to great obloquy, — his conver- 
sion being attributed, and with no small show of justice, to motives 
of interest. Nothing can be more absurd and unartificial than the 
outline and conduct of this fable ; in which the principal doctrines 
of religious politics are discussed by animals, and the chief sects into 
which the Christian world is divided are represented under the guise 
of various wild beasts. In the masquerade of 

"A milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged," 

the poet means to present the Roman Catholic Church; in that 
of the Panther, the other interlocutor in this polemical dialogue, 
the Church of England, depicted as a beautiful but not unspotted 
creature : — 

"The panther, sure the noblest next the hind, 
The fairest creature of the spotted liind, — 
Oh, could her inborn stains be wash'd away, 
She were too good to be a beast of prey, — 
How can I praise or blame, and not offend? 
Or how divide the frailty from the friend ? 
Her faults and virtues lie so mix'd, that she 
Nor wholly stands condemn'd, nor wholly free." 

Under the other animals are expressed the other sects ; and in the 
portraits of many of them we recognise Dryden's usual vigour and 
compression of thought. We may specify in particular the Bear and 
the Wolf, the Presbyterians and Independents, which are touched 



CHAP. X.] 



dryden's odes. 



189 



with a master's hand. We may remark in this noble work, as in all 
that Dryden ever wrote, a multitude of those terse and happy expres- 
sions which, like the glances in the modern poet, are 

New, as if brought from other spheres. 
Yet welcome, as if known for years:" 

aS; for instance, when Dryden speaks of the " winged wounds." 

We now approach the latter part of Dryden's life, a period when 
the sun of prosperity, which had thrown a transient glow of well- 
being over his career, was to set, and leave the great poet to finish 
his day in gloom, poverty, and unrequited labour. 

At the Revolution, in 1688, he lost his office of laureate, and the 
remainder of his life was passed in unremitting toil. But no dimi- 
nution of splendour or intensity is perceptible in the lustre of " this 
mighty orb of song;^^ and his great powers seem to acquire new vig- 
our and activity with his declining age and his decreasing fortunes. 
His latest works are esteemed his best ; and it seems to furnish us with 
an irresistible proof (if such were needed by those who remember the 
life of Milton) of the elastic and unconquerable spirit of the higher 
order of genius. Dryden now undertook the mighty task of translating 
Virgil — a task for which it cannot be denied he was peculiarly unfitted, 
not only by the character of his mind, but by the nature of his pre- 
vious productions. Of all the classical poets, Virgil is the one 
whose prevailing and most prominent merit is exquisite delicacy of 
thought and expression ; a quality which Dryden, partly from want 
of sympathy, partly perhaps also from the rapidity with which he 
usually wrote, was in no way likely either to appreciate or to repro- 
duce. His translation, therefore, though valuable as retaining many 
of the excellences of the English poet, can hardly be considered a 
faithful representation of the Eoman bard : it is Dryden, and often 
Dryden in high perfection, but it is seldom or never Virgil. 

Among the finest compositions of his latter years, we must now 
mention the Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, a lyric composition of the 
elevated and elaborate character, which is absolutely unequalled in 
the English language, and approaches nearer to the true tone of 
ancient lyric poetry than any modern production. Its subject is the 
power of music, which is most happily illustrated and described in 
the succession of different passions and sentiments supposed to be 
excited by Timotheus, in the mind of Alexander, feasting, a trium- 
phant conqueror, in JPersepolis. Pride, joy, pity, love, terror, and 
revenge, are successively evoked by the magic of the ''mighty 
master,^' and chase each other, like sun and shade along a mountain 
side, over the conqueror's heart. All these passions, it is true, are 
not described with equal felicity or equal taste ; but minor defects 
are forgotten in the majestic movements, now gay and now sublime, 
of Dryden's versification. It reminds the reader of some grand and 



190 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. X. 

elaborate concerto of Beethoven, in which the softest airs and the 
most complex harmonies alternate with grand bursts of wild tempest- 
music, and swelling strains of lamentation or of triumph, like the 
grief or the joy of some whole people. Dryden wrote another ode 
of great but inferior excellence, a funeral lyric on the death of Anno 
Killigrew ; but this latter is injured in its effect by various passages 
rather ingenious and fantastic than either pathetic or sublime. 

His last work of any importance was his '■ Fables,^ a collection of 
narrative and romantic poems, chiefly modernised from Chaucer or 
versified from Boccaccio. In these his genius appears in all its 
plenitude of splendour ; and nothing can exceed in intensity the im- 
pression they make upon the reader of the poet's consummate mastery 
over the whole mechanism of his language and versification, and a 
peculiar air of conscious power which, though it strongly characterises 
all Dryden's compositions, is in none of them so conspicuous as in 
these. 

We must not forget the deep debt of gratitude which the modern 
English literature owes to Dryden, were it only for his having in his 
fables disinterred for his countrymen the rich stores of poetry con- 
cealed in the then obsolete and unread pages of Chaucer, and thus 
prepared the way for a renewed and more reverential study of the 
admirable productions of our elder writers. If Dryden had done 
no more than this, he would have done an inestimable service to the 
literature of his country ; and we should have been at a loss to speak 
with sufficient respect- of a man all whose earlier works are in their 
general character so widely different in feeling and spirit from the 
productions of the Middle Ages, and who yet had sufficient taste and 
discernment, though living in an age when these works were almost 
completely unread, and perhaps confounded in one sweeping accusa- 
tion of unintelligible barbarism, to perceive their beauties, and to 
disencumber them of the dust and cobwebs of two hundred years. 
But the fables of Dryden are not by any means to be considered as 
mere imitations or modernisings of Chaucer; they have a character 
intrinsically their own, and they might be read with great advantage 
together with the originals. Of course the simplicity of the old 
poet, the sly grace of his language, that exquisite tone of naivete^ 
which, like the lispings of infancy, gives such a charm to the early 
literature of almost every country, the direct and simple pathos 
coming directly from and going as directly to the heart — all this is 
wanting in the imitations of Dryden ; and it is questionable whether, 
even if he had felt and sympathised with these qualities of his 
original (qualities possessed by almost all early poets, and most 
peculiarly by Chaucer), the process of transfusion into more modern 
language would not have evaporated this aroma of antiquity : for a 
modern poet, not inferior to Dryden in genius, and certainly superior 
to him in reverential admiration of Chaucer, has confessed his 



CHAP. X.] 



DRYDEN'S fables — PROSE WORKS. 



191 



complete failure in the attempt to modernise these delightful works 
without losing their bouquet. But what he wants in tenderness 
Dryden amply makes up in grandeur, in variety of diction, and in 
richness of metrical arrangement. Among the finest of these tales 
are the admirable stories of Palamon and Arcite, Cymon and Iphigenia, 
January and May, and Theodore and Honoria. The besetting sin 
of Dryden was the vice of his age — licentiousness ; a defect which 
stains this no less than his other works. Chaucer is sometimes 
coarse and plain-spoken, but he is never immoral ; his indelicacies 
are less in the idea than in the language, and arise less from any 
native pruriency in the poet's mind than from the comparative rude- 
ness and simplicity of his age : Dryden's we must confess with sorrow 
and humiliation, are deliberate and most reprehensible administerings 
to the base profligacy of a corrupted society. In these tales, many 
of which are distinguished, in the original of Chaucer or Boccaccio, 
for deep and simple pathos, Dryden shows his usual insensibility to 
the softer and tender emotions. His love is little else than the 
physical or sensual passion, and he signally fails in exciting pity. 
Of this latter remark we shall find abundant proofs; we need only 
mention the weak and cold painting, in Dryden, of the dying scene 
in Palamon and Arcite — a scene which, in Chaucer, it is scarcely 
possible to read without tears. 

Dryden's prose is such as such a man might naturally be expected 
to write. It is careless, hasty, and unequal, but vigorous and idioma- 
tic to the highest degree. His unversified compositions consist 
chiefly of dedications and prefaces. The former was a species of 
necessary accompaniment to every book at a time when the literary 
profession occupied a much lower place in the scale of society than 
it has since attained. It is humiliating to think of the greatest 
genius and intellect thus begging, in a strain of adulation only the 
more fulsome as the more elegant, the patronage of some obscure 
great man to works which were destined to immortalise the age which 
produced them, and to form the brightest ornament of the country 
which gave them birth. How painful to see them thus selling their 
precedency and birthright for " a piece of silver," and stimulating 
the niggard bounty of a patron with the highest refinements of intel- 
lectual flattery ! But this deplorable sacrifice of independence litera- 
ture is no longer compelled to make, — 

" The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, 
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, 
To heap the shrine of luxury and pride 

With incense kindled at the Muse's flame." 

These dedications in most cases are absolute models of elegance and 
style; so much so, that in reading them one almost forgets the 
grossness of the adulation they convey. In the prefaces, which 



192 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. X. 



were generally treatises on "various departments of poetry, or critical 
essays on the characters of poets, Dryden has established for himself 
a claim, not only to the glory of being one of the most nervous and 
idiomatic writers in the language, but also to that of having been the 
first to write in English anything that deserves the appellation of 
liberal and comprehensive criticism. These prefaces were in general 
composed with no higher object than that of swelling the size, and 
consequently augmenting the price, of the pamphlet or volume to 
which they were appended; and though written to all appearance 
very rapidly and carelessly, these essays frequently contain the first 
germs or outlines of a true judgment respecting the merit of ancient 
or modern authors, and remarks, equally solid and original, concern- 
ing many important departments of literature. That Dryden's 
literary creed is not always orthodox, nor his opinions always tenable, 
can be matter neither of astonishment nor animadversion ; for we 
must remember that he lived when the fundamental principles of 
criticism were not yet established, and that he was the first English 
labourer who drove a plough into that rich and fertile field which 
was destined to be so assiduously cultivated. In some of these 
compositions he has given us short but masterly sketches of many 
of our older authors, whose works, when Dryden wrote, were either 
not read at all, or were quoted with a species of disparaging and 
half-contemptuous approbation. He deserves therefore, and he will 
obtain, everlasting glory for the justice which he has so nobly ren- 
dered to the merits of our elder dramatists — authors with whose 
peculiar excellences he could hardly have been expected (d priori) 
to feel any very deep sympathy, and whom the fashion of his age 
had apparently consigned to oblivion ; and a still higher degree of 
applause must be assigned to him for the noble testimony he has 
borne to the transcendent merit of Milton, an author whose works it 
must have been, were it only from political motives, unfashionable, 
if not even dangerous to praise. 

In the brief account which we have given of the numerous and 
varied productions of this great man, we think we have omitted few 
of any importance, if we except his translation, or rather paraphrase, 
of the satires of Juvenal and Persius, and his imitations of the epis- 
tles of Horace. There was so much resemblance between the personal 
and literary characters of Dryden and Juvenal, that we should expect 
to find in the English poet a perfect reproduction, not only of the 
matter, but of the manner, of the Roman bard. And we shall not 
be disappointed. The declamatory boldness, mingled with frequent 
touches of sarcastic humour; the rhetorical gravity, relieved by a 
kind of stern mirth; the inexhaustible richness of invective; and 
the condensed weight of moral precept; — all these were qualities 
which Dryden's moral poetry possesses of itself : he had not to go 
out of his own manner to be a perfect representative of Juvenal. 



CHAP. XI.] 



CLARENDON. 



193 



This is amply proved by liis own satire entitled Mac-Flecknoe, per- 
haps the most vehement, rich, and varied piece of invective in which 
personal hatred and contempt ever borrowed the language of moral 
or literary reprobation. It is chiefly directed against Shad well, 
whom he represents, in a kind of mock-heroic allegory, admirable 
for its boldness and vivacity, as the successful candidate for the 
crown of stupidity, left vacant by the abdication of Flecknoe, a 
wretched poetaster of that day, and whose Irish origin is wittily 
indicated in the name Mac-'Flecknoe conferred upon his worthy 
successor. This poem is " the sublime of personal satire the lines 
seem to flow on, burning, bright, and irresistible, like the flood of 
lava bursting from the crater of the volcano, withering, crushing, 
and blasting all that they approach. 

Dryden died in comparative poverty, though universally placed by 
all his contemporaries at the head of the poets of his age, a posi- 
tion which his name will ever continue to retain. This event took 
place on the 1st of May, 1700, and his remains were buried with 
great pomp in Westminster Abbey. The expense of his funeral 
was defrayed by a public subscription, and a monument was after- 
wards erected in his honour by the Duke of Buckingham, intended 
to bear the following dignified and laconic inscription : — 

"This Sheffield raised: the sacred dust below 

Was Dryden once. The rest who does not know ?" 



CHAPTER XL 

CLARENDON, BUNYAN, AND LOCKE. 

Clarendon's Life — History of the Rebellion — Characters — John Banyan — ■ 
The Pilgrim's Progress — Allegory — Style — Life of Bunyan — Locke — The 
New Philosophy — Practical Character of Locke's Works — Life — Letters on 
Toleration — Essay on the Ilunian Understanding — Theory of Ideas — Trea- 
tises on Government — Essay on Education. 

In the same manner as the external character of the scenery of 
any country is reflected in the fine arts which flourish there, do the 
great and stirring periods of history tend to produce the talent by 
which alone they can be worthily commemorated and described : the 
savage grandeur of the Calabrian mountains and the sunny loveliness 
of the plains of Romagna are not more certainly the suggestive cause 
of Salvator's wild sublimity or Claude's romantic grace, than the rout 
of Xerxes was of the patriotic fervour of the ^schylean tragedy, or 
the Peloponnesian War of the profound political philosophy of 



191 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATUUE. [CHAP. XI. 

Thucjdides. We cannot therefore wonder that the great Civil War 
in England, the Eepublic, the Protectorate, and the Restoration — a 
period so crowded with events, and so full of intense dramatic interest 
• — should have produced a historian worthy of describing the mighty 
revolutions which were to exercise so extensive and enduring an 
influence upon the future fortunes of Great Britain. 

These events were sufficiently striking and important to have 
inspired even an ordinary intellect : a narration tolerably faithful and 
detailed, and executed by a common hand, could not foil to possess a 
strong and lasting interest. How fortunate are we, then, to have a 
history of this busy period, executed by a man not only endowed 
with extraordinary powers of intellect, but one who was himself a 
principal actor in the occurrences he describes ! This was Edward 
Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon and Lord Chancellor of England. 
His work is invaluable for more reasons than one. It contains a 
minute account of a period of peculiar importance in the constitu- 
tional history of the country, was the production of a distinguished 
lawyer and statesman, himself in a position to enjoy unusual oppor- 
tunities for obtaining accurate and extensive information, and person- 
ally acquainted with many of the most distinguished men of the 
time ; it is much more free from partiality and prejudice than could 
be reasonably expected under the circumstances, and is, above all, 
written in that easy and colloquial style whicji is best adapted to re- 
count the events, without depriving them of their natural power of 
interesting and amusing the reader. 

Hyde was born in 1608, and, after studying at Oxford, devoted 
himself to the profession of the law, in which he soon distinguished 
himself so far as to attract the notice of the famous Laud. Being 
a man of considerable fortune, he now abandoned (in 1640) the 
practice of his profession, entered parliament, and commenced a 
political and literary career. He appears, after some hesitation, to 
have joined the royalist party, and became one of the most wise and 
trusty advisers ef the unfortunate monarch, whose contentions with 
his parliament and people were so soon to end in the destruction of 
his throne, the loss of his life, and the expatriation of his family. 
Though professing monarchic and constitutional opinions, Hyde never 
pushed them to that pitch of extravagance which caused the tempo- 
rary ruin of the monarchy; and if the vacillating and infatuated 
Charles had yielded to the advice of his moderate and sensible 
minister, the fatal catastrophe might perhaps have been avoided; for 
the English people has ever been distinguished, as a body, for its 
firm attachment to monarchical institutions; its cry has been, in all 
ages, when its true sentiments have been able to secure free expres- 
sion, that of the barons of King John — Nolumus leges Angliae 
mutari." But it was not to be so in the present instance; Charles 
I. was destined to pursue the fatal path traced out for him by a rais' 



CHAP. XI.] 



claeendon: his life. 



m 



taken (however sincere) notion of his own prerogative ; the nation 
was to be precipitated into twenty years of bloodshed and tyranny, 
and Providence was to give a terrible lesson to all infatuated kings 
and to all rebellious peoples. 

Hyde, who had been made Chancellor of the Exchequer, and 
raised to the dignity of knighthood, now quitted the king at Oxford, 
and accompanied Prince Charles to the west of England, and after- 
wards to the island of Jersey, where he remained for two years, 
occupied in writing an account of the events in which he had been 
engaged. This was probably the happiest and most tranquil period 
of his life. In 1648 he again joined the prince in Holland, from 
whence he was sent to Madrid on a mission to the court of Spain. 
This embassy — the object of which was to induce Spain to interfere 
actively in behalf of the exiled house of Stuart — was totally 
ineffectual; so much so, indeed, that Hyde and his companions were 
ultimately ordered to C[uit the country. The subject of our remarks 
now rejoined his wife and family, whom he had left at Antwerp ; 
and after passing some time there in extreme distress, and even 
destitution, he again returned to his unfortunate master, who was 
now at Paris. From this period till the Restoration, Hyde con- 
tinued to perform for the royal exile those services which none but 
a very wise and faithful adherent could have rendered, which the 
carelessness, profligacy, and extravagance of the second Charles's 
character made so necessary, and which no gratitude could repay. 
He watched over the financial affairs of the king and his ragged 
little court, gave continual advice, frequently as unpalatable as it 
was wise, and keeping up by every means in his power the some- 
times precarious harmony, and still more precarious respectability, 
of the little band of gentlemen who surrounded the king. 

Charles, to whom Hyde must have appeared in the light in which 
a dissipated youth of ruined family regards a severe but faithful 
steward, expressed his gratitude to him by naming him Chancellor, 
a dignity which at that time was productive rather of danger and 
annoyance than either profit or power. At the Restoration he began 
to receive the solid and merited recompense for his services and 
privations. He was now the first officer of the crown, and had 
reached the highest dignity which a subject can attain. His 
daughter, by marrying the Duke of York, became closely allied to 
the royal family of England; and at the coronation, in 1661, Hyde 
was created Earl of Clarendon, and presented with 20,000/. For 
some time he continued to be one of the king's chief advisers; and 
it is allowed by politicians of all parties that his counsels were dis- 
tinguished for their sagacity and their moderation. But he soon 
began to incur the dislike not only of the court, but of the nation. 
The former were jealous of him for the severity of his morals, for 
his opposition to the extravagance and profligacy of the times, which 



196 



OUTLINES or GENERAL LITERATURE. [CIIAP. XI. 



must have made Clarendon a perpetual contrast and reproach to the 
society of that day ; and the people, still in the fervour of loyalty, 
and probably jealous of the great wealth and aggrandisement of 
Hyde and his family, were but too apt to echo the sentiments of the 
court. He was compelled to resign the Crreat Seal, and forced, by 
the ingratitude of the sovereign for whom he had done so much, to 
leave the country. He retired to France, where he employed the 
closing years of his life in composing his invaluable history. He 
died in 1674. 

His ' History of the Great Rebellion ' was written entirely from 
personal recollections, and in that style which is best adapted to 
relate personal recollections with effect. It is perfectly natural and 
easy; and thus the strange and romantic adventures of the king are 
recounted in a manner which not only renders them more impressive 
and amusing, but convinces the reader of the narrator's good faith 
and accuracy. Absolutely impartial in every case it is not, and 
it could not be; but it has always been considered, and with justice, 
as the most faithful and comprehensive account we possess of the 
interesting events it commemorates. The style has some defects of 
prolixity and want of clearness; but it is a work to which the 
reader returns again and again with renewed pleasure and profit, not 
only from the immense mass of information which it contains, but 
from the vigorous, sagacious, manly, and honourable tone of thought 
which pervades it. It abounds in minute and complete characters 
of public men. We are hardly apt to appreciate all the penetration 
displayed in these, as we consider them, in the reading, to be simply 
a recapitulation of the historian's observations; and we do not at 
first perceive the quiet sagacity with which this great intellectual 
portrait-painter has concentrated his attention upon those traits 
which constitute the individuality of the subject, neglecting, or 
rather judiciously subduing, those features which are not so marked 
and characteristic. As, in examining the living likenesses of 
Titian and Vandyke, a spectator unacquainted with the practical 
details and the practical difficulties of the art will find his impres- 
sions of the painter's genius absolutely weakened by the very ease 
and facility of the execution, so it may be said that the apparent 
naturalness and simplicity of Clarendon's narrative is apt at first to 
diminish our feeling of the difficulty of his task, and of the skill 
with which he has executed it. Clarendon,''' says Hallam, "is 
excellence in everything that he has performed with care; his 
characters are beautifully delineated; his sentiments have often a 
noble gravity, which the length of his periods, far too great in 
itself, seems to befit; but in the general course of his narration he 
is negligent of grammar and perspicuity, with little choice of words, 
and therefore sometimes idiomatic without ease or elegance." 

Besides his excellent History, Clarendon has left us, not to speak 



CHAP. XI.] : THE GREAT REBELLION. 



197 



of a great number of state papers, written in a manner seldom 
equalled for dignity and weight, a few other works, several of which 
remained unpublished and unknown till a considerable time after his 
death, when they were printed, and have much contributed to establish 
his fame as a great writer, and a wise and virtuous man. That which 
is likely to possess the most universal interest is a dissertation on the 
comparative happiness and usefulness of an active or a contemplative 
life. It is an irresistible argument in favour of the former: and 
Clarendon's own busy and patriotic existence is a complete confirma- 
tion of the proposition maintained by his vigorous logic. >c 

We have more than once taken occasion to remark that in every 
sound, durable, and healthy literature there will always be found a 
large number of illustrious names, of men sprung from the middle 
and lower, and even the humblest, ranks of society : and this pheno- 
menon will be more frequent, obviously, in proportion as the litera- 
ture in question is of a vaster and more all-embracing character, the 
expression of national sympathies and feelings, and speaking loudly 
and clearly to the national heart. To the glory of England it must 
be said, that the vernacular literature of no civilized nation in ancient 
or modern times can show so long and so splendid a list of men 
rising from the humbler classes of citizens, and eternising their own 
age and their country's greatness by triumphs of valour, of wisdom, 
and of genius. Among these, not the least remarkable is John 
Bunyan, whose career was as extraordinary as his origin was low, or 
as his productions are inimitable and original. There is perhaps 
hardly any European language which does not possess a version or a 
paraphrase of the ^ Pilgrim's Progress' — that wonderful fiction, in 
which a religious allegory is conveyed with an effect absolutely 
heightened by the very qualities of style which at first sight we 
should consider would be most likely to injure its impressivencss, by 
an unequalled simplicity and even rudeness of language, and by a 
bold directness of metaphor and a fearless literalness of parable which 
no other work, we think, exhibits. 

The subject of this romance (for it partakes of the elements of 
romantic fiction) is a delineation of the trials, temptations, struggles, 
and ultimate triumph of a Christian, in his progress from a life of 
sin to eternal felicity, typified under the Grolden City, or the New 
Jerusalem of the Apocalypse. These adventures are all parables; 
and the hero. Christian, his friends and enemies — in short, all the 
personages of the drama — are more or less of the same character, 
personifications of abstract qualities, the follies, the vices, the fears, 
the hopes, the virtues, and the failings of religious humanity. So 
far we have nothing more than the ordinary materials of apologue or 
allegory. In what then consists the peculiar charm of this strange 
and original fiction, — a charm which renders the rude pages of Bun- 
yan as familiar and delightful to a child as they are attractive to the 



198 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XT. 



less impressionable mind of critical manhood? It is the homely 
earnestness, the idiomatic vigour of the style ; it is the fearless 
straightforwardness of the conceptions, and the inexhaustible richness 
of imagery and adventure. Drawing all his materials from the 
Scriptures and from the vivid and intense recollections of his own 
spiritual career, the wonderful tinker seems to recount the adventures 
of his hero with a simple eagerness and good faith which annihilates 
our consciousness of the intervention of a book between the author 
and the reader : we seem to be sitting besid him as he labours at his 
" tagged laces" in the jail of Bedford, and we listen with the willing 
attention and the absorbing wonder of a child hearkening to its nurse's 
fairy-tale. Indeed the very rudeness of the style, with its rough 
idiomaticism, its picturesque rustic earnestness, and the strong tinge 
of Scriptural phraseology, brings us involuntarily back to the age of 
infancy — the age of belief. In the painting of the multitude of 
characters which crowd the action of his strange drama, we often 
mark vigorous strokes of observation, sagacity, and even humour. 
The adventures, too, are varied with a prodigality of conception 
which appears absolutely unbounded ; and though the primary idea 
of them is often little more than a bold embodiment of some Scrip- 
tural phrase or metaphor, yet the author seems, in spite of himself, 
to have perpetually brought them before us, and home to our senses 
as it were, by some unexpected and most picturesque touch of descrip- 
tion, generally of that actual and material kind which forms so great 
a charm in popular legends. Like these latter productions, the 
episodes of Bunyan's Christian drama often possess a high degree 
of what we may call simple ingenuity : they sometimes attain a true 
natural tenderness and beauty, and not unfrequently an unusual 
pitch of terrific grandeur and sublimity. What, for instance, can 
be more simply and therefore more genuinely graceful than the 
pastoral picture of the shepherds on the Delectable Mountains; what 
more gloomy and more terrific than the Valley of the Shadow of 
Death ; what more natural, lively, and dramatic than the dialogues 
with Mr. Hopeful, Mr. G-reatheart, and Mr. Littlefaith ? 

The impressiveness of Bunyan resembles that of the old woodcuts 
executed in the infancy of the art of engraving : there is in both 
cases a rude vigour and homeliness of outline, a strange ignorance 
of costume, and a powerful tendency to realise even the most abstract 
things by connecting them with the ordinary details of everyday life ; 
there is also the same earnest intensity of purpose, and incessant 
struggle to bring the objects within the comprehension of the unculti- 
vated minds to which the work was addressed. Above all there is 
visible, in the rude woodcut of the old G-erman artist, as in the hardly 
less rude narrative morality of the English tinker, the unmistakable 
and inimitable originality of genius. It is this quality which prevents 
the style of Bunyan, though often coarse, from ever being vulgar. 



CHAP. XI.] 



bunyan: his life. 



199 



Southey Las excellently remarked, in liis preface to the ' Pilgrim's 
Progress/ " His is a homespun style, not a manufactured one : and 
what a difference is there between its homeliness and the flippant 
vulgarity of the Roger L'Estrange and Tom Brown school ! If it 
is not a well of English undefiled, to which the poet as well as the 
philologer must repair if they would drink of the living waters, it is 
! a clear stream of current English, the vernacular speech of his age 
— sometimes, indeed, in its rusticity and coarseness, but always in its 
plainness and its strength. To this natural style Bunyan is in some 
degree beholden for his general popularity; his language is every- 
where level to the most ignorant reader and to the meanest capacity; 
there is a homely reality about it • a nursery tale is not more intel- 
ligible, in its manner of narration, to a child." 

In speaking of the causes of the extraordinary attraction wliicb 
this book possesses, particularly to the young, we must not forget the 
immense command which Bunyan had over the whole vast store of 
Scripture language and imagery. He was emphatically a man of 
one book, a circumstance which was of itself almost sufficient to 
give his mind and productions a stamp of sincerity, originality, and 
force. He is a man of one book, and that book was the best. It 
was religion which first raised Bunyan from the slough of coarse 
indulgences and brutal ignorance in which, as he relates in his 
strange autobiography, he was plunged during the early part of his 
life : it was religion that first stirred up the depths of his honest and. 
enthusiastic soul, and taught him to think as well as to feel : and 
much as his fanaticism (which was undoubtedly in some degree 
extravagant, proportioned to the greatness of the change produced in 
him by the vivifying influence of religious conviction acting on a 
powerful, imaginative, and uneducated character) may have exagger- 
ated the extent of that transformation, we cannot wonder at his pro- 
found and incessant meditations on the instrument that produced it. 

His life may be recounted in a few words : he was the son of a 
tinker in Bedfordshire, and was born in 1628. Having acquired no 
education beyond reading and writing, he followed his father's less 
than humble occupation, and travelled about the country, indulging 
in all manner of profligate and sinful habits, among which that of 
swearing appears to have been perhaps the most reprehensible, 
though he speaks himself with almost equal horror of his reprobate 
t-iste for dancing, ale-drinking, and bell-ringing. After having been 
awakened, as he himself imagined (as do all enthusiasts in a similar 
case), by a direct miraculous interposition of God, to a sense of his 
lost and wicked state, he appears to have gone through all the 
phases of transformation, from a careless and debauched peasant — • 
"Christopher Sly, old Sly's son of Burton-heath; by birth a pedler, 
by education a cardmaker, by transmutation a bearherd, and now 
by present profession a tinker" — into an eloquent and celebrated 



200 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XI. 



preacher, and an author of enduring reputation. His religious 
convictions having gradually acquired consistence and certainty, he 
was admitted, in 1655, a member of the sect or congregation of 
Baptists and he in time became a distinguished spiritual leader of 
that society. In this position he remained for five years, when he 
fell under the provisions of the law enacted against various denomi- 
nations of Dissenters, and was imprisoned during twelve years in 
the jail of Bedford. Part of this long reclusion he employed in 
the composition of his works, the principal of which are the singular 
and interesting autobiography to which we have more than once 
alluded, and to which he gave the title of " Grace Abounding to 
the Chief of Sinners;' the 'Pilgrim's Progress;' and another reli- 
gious romance or allegory, entitled ' The Holy War made by King 
Shaddai on Diabolus, for the regaining of the Metropolis of the World, 
or the losing and regaining of MansouL' Under this strange fanatical 
title it may easily be understood that we have a description of the 
Fall of Man, typified in the siege of the city of Mansoul, by Ira- 
nianuel, the son of Shaddai or Jehovah, who ultimately retakes it 
from the usurper Diabolus. The 'Pilgrim's Progress' is divided 
into two parts, of which the first is by far the most striking, the 
latter exhibiting considerable marks of inferior originality and 
vivacity, and thus following the ordinary course of Second Parts 
and Continuations. The first part describes the adventures of 
Christian in his pilgrimage to the Heavenly Jerusalem; and the 
second goes over the same ground with a manifest and unavoidable 
diminution of interest, detailing the journey taken by the wife and 
children of Christian. 

In the manner of thinking, in the subjects selected by this sin- 
gular genius, no less than in the style by which he conveys his con- 
ceptions to the reader, we find innumerable traces of that enthu- 
siastical and fanatic spirit which was prevalent in England during 
the Civil War and the Republic, and which still characterises the 
opinions and the language of those numerous sects which dissent 
from the discipline and doctrines of the Church of England. It is 
an ardent, sincere, and active spirit, and, if not always very philo- 
sophical, very reasonable, or very charitable, v/e must remember that 
it has generally been lighted up and cherished by proscription and 
persecution, and consequently is generally found burning most 
brightly in the hearts of the obscure and the uneducated. It is not 
surprising, therefore, that the exclusive study of the Scriptures, and 
incessant meditation upon a topic so mysterious and so all-important 
as religion, should lead poor and ignorant and persecuted men first 
into enthusiasm and then into fanaticism and superstition, and make 
them fall into the error, so universal in all ages, of overrating the 
importance and misinterpreting the significance of their own internal 



CHAP. XI.] 



LOCKE: THE NEW PHILOSOPHY. 



201 



sensations, and investing the phantoms of their own heated imagi- 
nation in the sacred character of direct inspirations of God. 

Bunjan was liberated from prison by the generous and charitable 
interference of Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln, and continued to exercise 
his occupation of itinerant preacher till the proclamation of James 
II. appeared, recognising the right of the dissenting sects to liberty 
of conscience and worship. He then was enabled, with the assist- 
ance of several friends, to build a meeting-house in Bedford, where 
he continued to preach with -great and increasing reputation, occa- 
sionally making visits to his brother nonconformists in London, until 
his death. This event took place in 1688. Few of his numerous 
works are now read, with the exception of the Pilgrim's Progress,' 
a book whose admirable originality will ever cause it to retain its 
place in English literature beside the ^ Robinson Crusoe ' of De Foe, 
a fiction to which it bears in many points a very strong resemblance 
— a resemblance for which we shall endeavour to account in another 
place, when we come to speak of the last-named production. The 
two works are equally favourites with the young : they are read 
with equal interest, and remembered in after life by all who ever 
read them with equal tenacity. 

In speaking of the vast revolution brought about in philosophy by 
Bacon, we took occasion to remark how fortunate it was for his sys- 
tem, and for the future value of his writings, that their author should 
have been a man not theoretically alone, but also practically, 
acquainted with human affairs, and with the ordinary operations and 
general errors of the human mind. The distinguishing quality of 
the New Philosophy is precisely this practical spirit ; and whatever 
the speculations of science na ve lost in our later days in sublimity 
and abstractness of tone has been more than compensated for by their 
greater accuracy, usefulness, and fertility. And indeed this superior 
sublimity of ancient philosophy is much more in appearance than iu 
reality ; for the triumphs of modern science, if more modest in their 
form and mode of acquirement, are incomparably more solid and 
more productive ) and a much truer and therefore sublimer idea of 
the grandeur and majesty of nature will be obtained from the calm 
and cautious experimentalism of modern days, than could be acquired 
from the bold but so often fallacious theorising of the ancient hypo- 
thetical and dogmatic method. Indeed it may be said that the older 
manner of philosophizing drew us rather to admire the genius and 
invention of the speculator, while the modern way leads us imme- 
diately to the contemplation of the subject of the speculation ; and 
fills us with admiration, not for the intellect, displayed in the inves- 
tigation, but for the wonders of the department of nature which forms 
the subject of the inquiry. In this respect, therefore, whatever has 
been lost by the philosopher has been more than regained by 
philosophy. 



202 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XI. 



Perhaps one of the most striking exemplifications of the Baconian 
method, in matter as well as in form, is to be found in the writings, 
so various and so important, of John Locke. Nor was there a less 
striking resemblance betweeen many principal features of the personal 
and intellectual character of these two great men. They possessed, 
both of them, the spirit of the practical — the useful — in the very 
highest degree : they both declared incessant and unrelenting war 
against the spirit of obscurity and mystery, the host of arbitrary and 
technical forms, in which the subjects-of their speculations had been 
obscured and enveloped by the scholastic philosophers : they were both 
the apostles and the high priests of common sense. 

Something of this plain and practical character — the Lutheranism 
of science — they possibly derived from their being themselves men 
personally versed in the real aifairs of actual life : but we must not 
on this ground withhold our admiration for that courage, that rare and 
highest species of intellectual magnanimity, which enabled them to 
throw aside in the arena of philosophy all the imposing but cumbrous 
panoply of systems and of schools, and, like the Spartan, "grapple 
with glory naked — with no arms but the vigour and flexibility of 
their own intellect. 

Locke was descended from an ancient and respectable family in 
Somersetshire, and was born in 1632. He was educated first at 
Westminster School, and afterwards at Christ Church College, 
Oxford, where he appears to have received that impulse in the direc- 
tion of metaphysical and educational science which was afterwards to 
turn to such invaluable account. The years between 1651 and 1664 
he spent at Oxford ; and it was during this period that he seems first 
to have become convinced of the imperfection and sterility of the 
course of metaphysical study pursued in the university, a course 
which took Aristotle for its compass, chart, and pilot. He appears 
to have been peculiarly struck with the comparative inefiiciency of 
the old dogmatic method in the investigation of truth, and the 
insignificance of the results obtained by the employment of so cum- 
bersome and complicated a mechanism. So great was his dissatisfac- 
tion, indeed, and so completely convinced was he of the hopelessness 
of any true acquisitions being made in this path of study, and with 
so fallible a guide, that he renounced a university career for the 
profession of medicine, a study in which the application of the 
experimental method had produced such striking results and opened 
so vast and hopeful a career. This profession, however, for which 
the natural penetration and acuteness of Locke's mind so eminently 
fitted him, and which is so peculiarly founded on common sense and 
observation, he was soon obliged to renounce from ill health, and we 
find him, in 1664, secretary to Sir Walter Vane, in Ireland, and sent 
by Charles II. on a diplomatic mission to Brandenburg. In the same 
year, 1664, Locke returned to Oxford, and was offered a considerable 



CHAP. XI.] 



LOCKE: HIS LIFE. 



203 



preferment in Ireland, provided he would enter tlie Church : this 
Locke declined to do, alleging for his refusal a reason the more 
honourable as it is rare — a want of that sentiment of peculiar voca- 
tion without which he justly thought no man ought to embrace the 
ecclesiastical career. In 1666 our philosopher became acquainted 
with Ashley, Lord Shaftesbury, a circumstance which brought him 
into familiar intercourse with many of the most distinguished intel- 
lects of the time. He became tutor to the son of his patron, and 
afterwards to his grandson — the famous Earl of Shaftesbury. 

In 1674 he went to France, and resided several years in that 
country, principally at Paris and Montpelier ; probably acquiring and 
consolidating, by an intercourse with learned and enlightened men, 
those sound and generous, tolerant and rational ideas, which so strongly 
characterise his writings. Four years after this, Shaftesbury having 
been recalled to power for a short period, Locke returned to England, 
and on his patron's second political fall he retired with him to Hol- 
land, where he remained till he was recalled by the Kevolution of 
1688. It was during his stay here that Shaftesbury died (1683), 
and Locke appears to have alleviated his exile with a great variety 
of active intellectual occupation. He established, at Amsterdam, a 
species of literary society, in which assembled many virtuous and 
learned men, chiefly, like himself, exiles on religious and political 
grounds, who were then residing in Holland. 

While residing under the protection of Holland, that nursing 
mother of toleration, Locke produced his first important work, a work 
worthy of its subject; this was his 'Letter on Toleration,' composed 
in Latin, and forming a solid and unanswerable argument in favour 
- of religious freedom. This subject he further developed in three 
other Letters which successively appeared, and which were written 
in reply to the Oxford criticisms on the first Letter. In all these 
works he follows the same line as had been taken before, not only 
by J eremy Taylor, but by so many of those ardent and acute Protes- 
tants who had been driven from France and England into exile for 
the free expression of their opinions. At this time, as in all ages 
when despotism has prevailed, political and religious authority were 
falsely supposed to be similar in nature, and to rest upon the same 
foundations ; an error which has caused the greatest oppressions on 
the one hand, and the most obstinate resistance on the other. 

It may easily be conceived with what delight Locke must have 
hailed the Revolution of 1688, an event which not only restored him 
to his country and secured to him the free expression of his opinions 
on matters of church and state, but which was in itself a kind of 
practical embodiment of his own political convictions. 

But it was not till the year 1690 that the genius of Locke appeared 
in its full vigour. Hitherto he had been combating, as it were, on 
the outposts of the great battle of human happiness and true philoso- 



204 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XI. 



phy : he now attacked the main position of the hostile array of error 
and prescription. It was at this time that appeared his great work, 
the ' Essay on the Human Understanding/ — a book the composition 
of which had been suggested, as he himself relates, by an accidental 
conversation, but the composition of which had occupied nearly eigh- 
teen years of inquiry and meditation. He relates that, having been 
once engaged with several of his friends in a discussion respecting 
some of the more abstract operations of the human mind, he had 
found that the argument began very soon to lose itself in the clouds 
of metaphysic uncertainty; and it then occurred to him, that no 
sound or true conclusions could be hoped for in such speculations 
until the nature of the human intellect itself had been, to a certain 
degree at least, examined and defined, and until some measure or 
limit had been established by which it could be approximately ascer- 
tained what ideas were really within the sphere of those operations, 
and what beyond them. Till this was done, it is plain, all argument 
respecting the results would be premature, useless, and productive of 
nothing but confusion. It was, as we should recollect, one of the 
most important problems proposed by Bacon, as destined to form the 
basis of all real progress in knowledge, to ascertain what were the 
paths in which the human intellect could hope to advance safely and 
profitably, and what were the reverse ; a question in no wise easy to 
resolve, and one which may form the subject of a special science 
hereafter to be investigated. 

One of the errors against which Locke is chiefly sedulous to warn 
the student is that mania for definition which in the older philosophy 
produces so fatal a tendency to substitute names for ideas. Pie had 
learned from Descartes the great principle of the impossibility of 
defining simple ideas, a principle the neglect or ignorance of which 
had substituted an endless word-catching for true productive investi- 
gation. 'The Essay on the Human Understanding,^ says Stewart, 
speaking particularly of the two first books, " is a precious accession 
to the theory of the human mind ; the richest contribution of well- 
observed and well-described facts which was ever bequeathed by a 
single individual ; and the indisputable, though not always acknow- 
ledged, source of some of the most refined conclusions, with respect 
to the intellectual phenomena, which have since been brought to 
light by succeeding inquirers." 

The leading doctrine of Locke is the double origin of our ideas, 
which are all to be traced to one of two sources, called by him sensa- 
tion and reflection. This theory, beautiful and simple as it is, may 
be considered as little more than a different and enlarged form for 
the non-existence of innate ideas in the human mind. Nothing is a 
more certain sign of imperfection either in physical or metaphysical 
science than the necessity for assigning a complex cause to simple 
phenomena; it is, in fact, of itself an antecedent improbability 



CHAP. XI.] Locke's treatises on government. 



205 



affecting the validity of any theory; and is, to a certain degree, an 
inversion of the usual order of nature, in which we perpetually see 
a complex result produced by a simple cause, but very seldom a 
simple effect flowing from a complex cause. In the former part of 
his proposition, Locke has reached the highest degree of clearness 
and completeness; namely, the investigation of those ideas which 
have their origin in sensation : in the latter part, or reflection, he 
has sometimes fallen into a certain degree of obscurity and contradic- 
tion ; but we have only to note the errors into which the greatest of 
preceding metaphysicians had fallen, some degrading the operations 
of the mind into mere material mechanism, and others refining them 
into a mystical and unintelligible transcendentalism. His style and 
language is everywhere clear, simple, and idiomatic to the highest 
degree ; not always quite elegant, it is true, but invariably address- 
ing itself directly to the understanding of a plain, cautious, and 
intelligent reader. It should be distinctly remembered that Locke is 
the steady and professed enemy of all scholastic and learned phrase- 
ology; and perhaps the very skill with which he has popularised his 
difiicult and important subject may have tended to diminish our 
sense of the obligations which science owes to his name : he has 
himself often furnished us with arms which we have become so 
dextrous in using, that we forget they were not of our Own invent 
tion — a fate which awaits almost all who have simplified human 
knowledge. 

That part of his work which has perhaps the greatest practical 
utility, and which gives this admirable author the strongest claim to 
our gratitude, is the portion devoted to guard against the imperfec- 
tions and the wrong use of words. And in this perhaps consists 
the peculiar originality of the work. In the older philosophy, which 
pursues the investigation of truth by the instrumentality of certain 
logical forms, as the syllogism, the inquirer is perpetually warned 
against fallacies proceeding from the incorrect use of these intellectual 
instruments ; but the older logic is always of a combative or polemic 
character, and the reasoner is placed in the light of a gladiator, pro- 
vided with offensive and defensive weapons, whose efforts are to be 
directed against an antagonist — a combatant like himself The 
older method, in short, enables us to overcome an opponent ; but it 
is far less peculiarly qualified to enable us to conquer ourselves. 

The object of philosophy is certainly not the silencing of an 
antagonist, but the ascertaining of truth; and in pursuit of this 
last object we are infinitely more exposed to error from fallacies 
arising in our own minds — from our own passions, prejudices, and 
ignorance, than from anything exterior to ourselves. It was these 
passions, prejudices, and this ignorance and misapplication or loose 
employment of language, that perhaps the most valuable portion of 
Locke's Essay is intended to combat and overthrow. The necessity 



206 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XT. 



of doing tliis before any true progress could be hoped in metapliysi- 
cal (or indeed in any) science was first, clearly and powerfully urged 
by Bacon : he first showed the mighty sway over the human mind 
of those idols or prejudices which seem almost inherent in our 
nature : it was Locke who most triumphantly overthrew their wide 
and fatal dominion. 

In 1690 Locke published his two ' Treatises on Civil G-overnment/ 
which originally sprang out of his refutation of Sir Robert Filmer's 
' once-celebrated book entitled ^ Patriarcha/ an elaborate attempt to 
prove that the royal power is derived from the paternal authority, 
and is, consequently, like that species of rule from which it sprang, 
naturally unlimited. Filmer's proposition leads immediately to 
despotism, or rather to the impossibility of lawfully resisting, on the 
part of the people, the encroachments of despotism. The refuta- 
tion of Filmer is more particularly confined to the first part of 
Locke's essay, in which he treats the question of the original right 
and origin of monarchical power, and inquires into the foundation 
of that right. 

Having thus cleared the way, he proceeds to investigate and lay 
down the true principles on which he conceives all human society to 
be founded. He first discusses the state of nature, and the rights 
and obligations of men antecedent to the voluntary establishment 
of society. He then treats, in an admirable and conclusive manner, 
of the nature and rights of property, exhibiting in this part of his 
work a striking contrast to those authors whose useless subtleties 
and unnecessarily refined definitions had obscured a subject on which 
it is so indispensable for all men to form true and distinct concep- 
tions. Labour he considers to constitute the true source of property, 
and to establish a natural and indefeasible right of the individual to 
the produce of his own exertions. He then traces the establishment 
of all government to the original or implied compact and consent of 
the members forming the primitive community, or by an uninter- 
rupted adhesion of the members beginning from that period and 
remaining unbroken. In these reasonings he chiefly follows the 
arguments of Hooker, in his ^ Ecclesiastical Polity.' The remainder 
of the work goes on to develop Locke's ideas — all of them bold, 
and some few perhaps untenable — respecting the rights and princi- 
ples of communities : and though he generally agrees v/ith Hooker, 
whose noble treatise has left very little to future investigators, at 
least as far as the limited nature of its subject extends, it is impossi- 
ble not to be profoundly struck with the clear, acute, solid, and 
simple manner of his reasonings, or with the vigorous, idiomatic, 
and unpedantic style in which the arguments are conveyed. 

This subject has been so fully and frequently discussed since 
Locke's time by men who have been able to throw upon it the light 
derived from practical experience of the real action of principles 



CHAP. XI.] Locke's essay on education. 



207 



which in his time had only begun to be investigated in theory, that 
this work will perhaps in future be rather referred to than studied 
as embodying all the arguments and proofs adducible on this subject; 
but however this may be, this portion of Locke's works must ever 
be considered as sufficient of itself to place his name very high 
* among the ablest expounders and the boldest defenders of human 
rights and liberties. 

In the next work which we have to notice he will be found in a 
character not less worthy of our gratitude anS respect : this is the 
VEssay on Education.^ "In this work," says Hallam, "which 
may be reckoned an introduction to that on the ^ Conduct of the 
Understanding/ since the latter is but a scheme of that education 
an adult person should give himself, he has uttered, to say the least, 
more good sense on the subject than will be found in any preceding 
writer. Locke was not like the pedants of his own or other ages, 
who think that to pour their wordy book-learning into the memory 
is the true discipline of childhood. The culture of the intellectual 
and moral faculties in their most extensive sense, the health of the 
body, the accomplishments which common utility or social custom 
has rendered valuable, enter into his idea of the best model of edu- 
cation, conjointly at least with any knowledge that can be imparted 
by books. 

Perhaps the most striking and not the least valuable peculiarity 
of Lockers treatise is the immense influence which he assigns in it to 
the power of habit in forming and modifying the characters of men. 
That he has a little over-stated and exaggerated the amount of this 
influence is incontestable, but we ought to remember that the effects 
of such an error, if applied in practice, could only be innocent, if not 
even beneficial.- It is, of course, an error into which the theorist on 
education is always peculiarly liable to fall, and one which hardly a 
single writer on the subject of education has altogether escaped. 
Locke had no personal opportunities for studying, in the only way in 
which it can effectually be studied, the nature and characters of chil- 
dren. Those who have devoted themselves to this deeply interesting 
subject are unanimous in their opinion that the characters of children 
will often be found, even where all external circumstances are as far 
as can be appreciated identically the same, to retain intrinsic differ- 
ences which can only be explained by the supposition that there exist 
at every age of life many and important varieties of character and 
intellectual constitution, in modifying which, education, however 
great its power, is very inefficient. Locke's system of education has 
been by many condemned as unreasonably severe ; but those who 
complain of it should bear in mind that he never fails to inculcate 
the indispensable necessity of the feeling of disgrace as an element 
in all punishment and correction; a condition which effectually 
excludes the possibility of undue severity on the part of the instructor; 



208 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XI. 



for tlie human mind has so instinctive an appreciation of what is 
just, that severity pushed beyond a certain limit would infallibly 
defeat its own object. 

Nothing can surpass the soundness and good sense displayed in 
the infinite multitude of minute observations respecting the physical, 
moral, and intellectual treatment of children, with which this excel- 
lent treatise abounds : so numerous, indeed, are they, and so valuable, 
that, though few branches of science have been more seduously cul- 
tivated, particularly of late years, than education, the best writers 
on the subject would seem to have done little more than complete 
and extend the plan laid down by Locke, whose whole work " bespeaks 
an intense, though calm, love of truth and goodness ; a quality which 
few have possessed more fully, or known so well how to exert, as this 
admirable philosopher.^' 

Besides these works, Locke was the author of an ^ Essay on the 
Reasonableness of Christianity,' and also of two vindications of the 
last-mentioned production, which we shall not stop to analyse, as the 
nature of its subject places it rather in the department of theology; 
and also because his reputation is rather founded on the works which 
we have noticed more at length. 

The ' Treatise on the Conduct of the Understanding,' to which 
we have more than once adverted as having been intended to 
form an introduction to his great work, did not appear till after his 
death. 

It is delightful to reflect that this great writer, whose mind was so 
acute and so vigorous, and who devoted all his energies to the further- 
ance of truth and goodness, was as amiable and venerable a man as 
he was an admirable author. His life was calm, happy, and laborious; 
and at his death, which happened in 1704, he left behind him, in 
his immortal works, a monument worthy of the eontinuer of Bacon, 
and of the friend of Newton. 



CHAPTER XIL 

THE WITS OF QUEEN ANNE. 

Artificial School — Pope's early Studies — Pope compared to Dryden — ^Essay on 
Criticism — Rape of the Lock — Mock-heroic Poetry — Temple of Fame, &c. 
— Translation of Homer— Essay on Man — Miscellanies — The Dunciad — 
— Satires and Epistles. Edward Young — English Melancholy — The Univer- 
sal Passion — Night Thoughts — Young's Style — Wit. 

Poetry, in order to address itself with success to the sympathies 
of the reader, must necessarily speak the language of the class for 
which it is written ; and the more limited that class, the feebler, the 



CHAP. XIT.] 



POPE S EARLY STUDIES. 



209 



more monotonous will be the accents of the poet. Shakspeare wrote 
for all mankind; and every human being, whatever his age and 
country, will find in Shakspeare's works matter of interest, of instruc- 
tion and delight. Pope and Swift wrote for an artificial and conven- 
tional society — not exclusively, it is true, for a court, but for what 
was then emphatically called the Town; and their writings speak 
the language not of the world, but of the city. The reader will 
find in them incessant strokes of worldly good sense and acuteness, a 
delicate and polished irony, a consummate neatness and distinctness of 
diction ; but he will look in vain for any of the higher attributes of crea- 
tive intellect : he will find a good deal of wit and ridicule; but he will find 
neither true passion, true humanity, true pathos, nor true humour ; for 
humour is to wit what the pertinent, genial, and creative power of the 
galvanic pile is to the momentary and destructive shock of electricity; it 
is not the ray which dazzles, but the heat which glows and animates. 
Thus wit is a quality immeasurably inferior to humour : indeed, 
humour is itself the fulfilment and completion of wit, and the pos- 
session of the former quality necessarily implies the existence of the 
latter. Of mere wit, a single scene of Shakspeare often contains as 
much, scattered with a profuse and apparently unconscious hand, as 
would furnish forth whole libraries of the neat and antithetic litera- 
ture of this period of Queen Anne: but in Shakspeare we remark 
not the wit, for its brilliancy is eclipsed by the much higher quality 
of humour; while in Pope or Swift or Addison the intellectual 
ingenuity appeals the more directly to our attention because it is 
unaccompanied by the higher quality. 

At the head of this artificial school in poetry long remained 
Alexander Pope, born in 1688, and sprung, like so many of the 
most illustrious men of England, from the middle or citizen class. 
His constitutional ill health, and the weakness and deformity of his 
frame, precluded him from pursuing any of the usual paths to dis- 
tinction, and in a manner assisted in giving to his mind its poetical 
direction. A great part of his youth was spent in the green shades 
of Windsor Forest, where his father possessed a country-house. 
Under circumstances so favourable to the development of the intel- 
lect — solitude, forced sedentariness, and that delicacy of organisation 
which so often accompanies physical weakness — Pope very early 
gave earnest of his future poetical powers. Self-educated, of im- 
mense literary industry, and of a character singularly reflective and 
sensitive, he had obtained literary reputation of no mean value at a 
period of life when boys in general are thinking of little else than 
robbing orchards and playing truant from school. Of this precocity 
of poetical development he often speaks himself : — 

"As yet a child, and all unknown to fame, 
I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came." 

At the age of sixteen Pope had already tried his strength in 



210 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XII. 



various attempts of different kinds of verse, among tbe rest in the 
drama — a species of writing for which his genius so little qualified 
him, that we have probably no reason to regret that his good sense 
induced him to destroy these youthful essays in scenic composition. 
Unsuccessful as he probably felt them to be, such attempts could not 
fail to strengthen and practise him in the art of expression, to 
educate his ear, and to give delicacy and variety to his versification. 
Like the young swallow, whose instinct informs it of the period of 
migration, Pope had already felt the mysterious call of genius ; and 
these uncertain efforts were but the hovering of the bird before it 
darts away upon its annual course — the balancing of the unpractised 
pinion, and the fixing of the yet untried flight. His first publication 
was a small collection of Pastorals, which, as well as a number of imi- 
tations and translations of Chaucer, plainly indicated to the public 
that a new, great, and original author was about to rise upon the 
literary horizon. A profound and venerating admirer of the genius 
of his great predecessor, Dryden, it is not surprising that Pope's first 
literary efforts should have been made in the same direction : his 
boyish admiration had been gratified by the approbation of the 
patriarch of poetry, and by his prediction of the young acolyte's 
future glory ; and it is no less natural that Pope's versification and 
style should be in some degree founded upon the practice of his 
illustrious predecessor. But there were essential differences between 
the manner of these two admirable writers — differences which must 
be accurately appreciated ere we can hope to form a just idea of their 
respective merits. In Dryden, a vigorous, careless, self-assured 
dexterity is perceptible, not accompanied with much passion, it is 
true, nor with much depth of sentiment, appealing only te the more 
obvious and direct sympathies of the human character, but imposing 
from the conscious ease which it indicates. In Pope we observe a 
greater degree of thought and reflection, a more refined acuteness of 
remark, and an almost fastidious neatness and polish of expression. 
Both poets are remarkable for the quality of good sense, and both 
are admirable for perfect clearness and distinctness of meaning; and 
if they sometimes fall into truisms and commonplaces, these are 
generally such as in themselves involve principles whose importance 
will excuse their frequent repetition, and are so adorned by happiness 
of illustration, that we forget the insipidity of the precept in the 
beauty of the language in which it is clothed. 

Both poets are greater in the delineation of artificial life, in the 
analysis of human passions, human motives, and human conduct, 
than in the delineation of external nature, or the sympathy with 
unsophisticated humanity ; but the force of Dryden rather consists 
in a kind of brave neglect of minuter shades of character, and a 
broad and manly touch of intellectual portrait-painting, while the 
figures of Pope are elaborated with the neat and discriminating 



CHAP. XIT.] POPE : COMPARED WITH DRYDEN. 



211 



delicacy of a pencil aecnrate without timidity, and distinct without 
coldness. Dryden is a Rubens, and Pope a Greuze or a Watteau, 
The peculiar species of versification — the rhymed couplet, so ex- 
quisitely adapted for satire and for moral declamation — which 
Dryden had carried to so high a pitch of harmony, variety, and 
power, was destined to receive from his successor the last finish of 
which its structure was capable : in the hands of the former poet 
it is an instrument of infinite compass, energy, and strength; 
beneath the touch of the latter it became much more limited, it is 
true, in variety of music, but exquisitely sensitive and delicate. 
Dryden frequently introduces the triplet, and occasionally the 
Alexandrine of twelve syllables, in order to wind up the period 
with a burst of rolling and sonorous music. This is an artifice 
much more sparingly employed by Pope. Indeed it may be said 
that this poet gave such perfection to the species of verse which he 
generally employed, and which became the popular and fashionable 
measure of his day, that the anatomy and prosodiacal structure of 
that kind of rhythm became at last familiar to the lowest class of 
writers, and the very excellence of Pope's verses furnished his 
rivals with the means of equalling him, at least as far as concerns 
the mechanical harmony of his metre. The rhymed couplet was 
balanced and polished and melodised, until its construction became 
a mere matter of dexterity; and it has been very justly observed 
that it is not always easy to distinguish — that is, in point of mere 
versification — between the productions of Pope and the meanest 
effusions of the most contemptible scribblers of his day. The 
couplet had been refined and elaborated into a feeble and timid 
propriety ; the sense almost invariably ended with the second line ; 
and the antithesis of sound and meaning between the two portions 
separated by the caesura, which was considered so great an ornament, 
frequently degenerated into a mere verbal opposition — a distinction 
without a difference. From falling into these defects Pope was 
admirably secured by the acut^ness and sagacity of his mind ; he is 
eminently the poet of good sense and reason : and though it is 
perhaps hardly fair to charge upon him the faults of his incompetent 
imitators, our conclusion will be that, in communicating an exquisite 
and almost effeminate grace to the measure which he used so well, 
bo somewhat impaired its vigour and its flexibility. 

In 1711 Pope published his 'Essay on Criticism,' a poem which 
was received with a universal burst of admiration ; a feeling rendered 
stronger by the contrast between the author's age and the character 
of his production. Though the work of a young man of not much 
more than twenty-one, this composition is no less remarkable for the 
finish of its style than for the ripe judgment which it displays, and 
the extent of reading and reflection which it indicates. It cannot 
be denied that the principles of art to be gathered from this well- 



212 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XII. 



thought and brilliantly-expressed work have little of that depth and 
comprehensiveness which the modern study of aesthetic science has 
communicated to criticism : they hardly, in short, penetrate to the 
"root of the matter;" but, as far as they go (which is, indeed, 
farther than criticism had gone before Pope wrote), they leave no- 
thing to be desired as true and sparkling thoughts dressed in the most 
appropriate language. 

But as a noble production of Pope's genius, and perhaps the most 
happy example of a new and original idea executed in a perfectly 
felicitous manner, we must cite the mock-heroic narrative poem 
entitled ^ The Rape of the Lock.' The occasion of its being written 
was the somewhat unjustifiable frolic of Lord Petre in stealing a 
lock of hair from Miss Arabella Fermor, one of the ornaments of 
the beau monde of the day. This rather familiar and cavalier piece 
of pleasantry produced a quarrel between the two families, and Pope 
composed his charming little poem " to laugh them together again," 
as he phrases it. In this object he was unsuccessful, it is said ; but 
the little mock-heroic epic, though it did not appease the disagree- 
ment to which it owed its origin, will secure for its author an immor- 
tality among his country's poets, so long as the language in which it 
is written shall endure. The poem is, as Addison justly characterised 
it, "merum sal — a delicious little thing." Like the ''Secchia Rapita' 
of Tassoni, which has preserved from oblivion the war whose insig- 
nificant origin it describes, ' The Rape of the Lock' will immortalise, 
by the mere force of grace and invention, things and persons other- 
wise entirely devoid of interest. The work, like the poem of Tassoni, 
or rather like the ^ Lutrin' of Boileau, is written in that species of 
mock-heroic which describes trifling or contemptible events with tho 
pompous elaboration of epic language. It is, in fact, a dwarf epic, 
with its involution of interest, its supernatural machinery of beings 
respectively favourable and adverse to the various personages, its 
episodes, and its catastrophe. This species of poetry has been most 
cultivated among the Italians, a people whose intense enjoyment of 
the ludicrous renders them peculiarly sensitive to burlesque and dis- 
cordant ideas, while the flexibility and richness of their language — 
and particularly of some of its provincial dialects, as the G-enoese, 
the Neapolitan, and the Venetian — gives them a singular power of 
comic expression. Thus in the older Italian comedy, to which 
Moliere owed so much, there is a species of unconscious and almost 
infantine simplicity of language and dialect, which forms the most 
admirable and appropriate vehicle for the ludicrous extravagance of 
the characters, and the sly shrewdness of the drollery. In compar- 
ing together the ' Lutrin' and * The Rape of the Lock,' we think no 
critic could hesitate to give a most decided preference to the latter. 
In the first place, the sluggish sensuality, ignorance, and squabbling 
of a parcel of gorbellied priests, forms a much less attractive sub- 



CHAP. XII.] 



THE RAPE OF THE LOCK. 



213 



ject for the comic poet than the elegant frivolities of aristocratic 
society ; and in the second, the species of machinery (supernatural 
interference) employed by Pope — the exquisite fairy mythology of 
the sylphs and gnome which he found in the writings of Paracelsus 
and the Rosicrucian philosophers — is infinitely more attractive, more 
elegant, more varied, more accordant with the character of the action, 
than the unreal impersonations of abstract qualities — as, for instance, 
in the celebrated episode of Sloth — adopted by Boileau in the 
^ Lutrin.' In reading the Frenchman's mock-heroic, we are struck 
with the propriety, polish, and neatness of the language; but we 
feel that the author is perpetually trenching upon the domain of 
satire — a territory which, though bordering upon the mock-heroic, 
" for thin partitions do their bounds divide,'' can never be entered by 
the mock-heroic poet without a loss of effect ; for satire in its essence 
is tragic, and the moment the comic author forgets to smile he quits 
his appropriate character. ' The Rape of the Lock' is divided into 
five short books or cantos, with a delightful mimicry of epic regu- 
larity. In the first, after an appropriate invocation, the poet describes 
the breaking of day, the awaking of his fair heroine, and the various 
offices and powers of the sylphs — being the protectors of the fair. 
We have next an enumeration of the omens which presage the 
catastrophe ; and a speech from Ariel, the guardian spirit of Belinda, 
warning her to admit into her breast no thoughts of beaux. The 
toilet is then described with a grace and refined elegance absolutely 
unequalled, we think, in comic poetry. In the second canto, the 
fair Belinda goes upon the water ; and occasion is taken to describe 
the " adventurous Baron's" determination to carry off the fatal lock 
or perish in the essay, with an account of the sacrificial ceremonies 
by which he propitiates the powers to aid his bold emprise. Next 
follows an exquisite description of the sylphs, and their desponding 
councils; among them Ariel distributes the guard of the various 
parts of Belinda's dress, and menaces them with severe and appro- 
priate punishment in case they abandon or neglect their charge. 
The reader's expectation being now wound up to the true epic state 
of suspense, the main action begins. The party land at Hampton 
Court, where, after a game of ombre, described with consummate 
grace and airy ingenuity, they take coffee, and the Baron executes 
his fatal purpose ; and the canto closes with an admirable picture of 
the respective despair and triumph of the different parties. In the 
fourth book the action quits this visible diurnal sphere," and the 
gnome Umbriel betakes himself to the enchanted empire of the 
goddess Spleen, from whom he obtains ^' a wondrous bag" — 

"Like that where once Ulysses held the winds; 
There she collects the force of female lungs, 
Sighs, sobs, and passions, and the war of tongues; 
A vial next she fills with fainting fears, 
Soft sorrows, melting griefs, and flowing tears." 



214 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XII. 



By the aid of these the gnome incites the fair unhappy to despatch 
Sir Plume (Sir Gleorge Brown) to the uncourteoas ravisher of the 
lock. The latter refuses to surrender his shining spoil, and Belinda 
concludes the canto with a lamentation over her hard fate and irre- 
parable loss. The fifth canto opens with an admirable description 
of a general battle (in metaphor) between the ladies and the gentle- 
men; the latter of whom, after a contest described with Homeric 
fire, are routed, and commanded by the fair and indignant victors to 
restore the lock. It is, however, discovered that this "causa teterrima 
belli" has disappeared and ascended to the skies, where it is to shine 
for ever as a constellation : — 

" A sudden star, it shot through liquid air, 
And drew behind a radiant trail of hair; 
Not Berenice's locks first rose so bright, 
The heavens bespangling with dishevell'd light, 
The sylphs behold it kindling as it flies, 
And pleased pursue its progress through the skies." 

From the foregoing meagre outline — all that our space will permit 
— the reader will obtain an idea of the ingenious plan and distribution 
of this enchanting miniature epic : to form a notion of the exquisite 
grace and fancy, and variety and delicacy of its execution, he must 
read it from beginning to end. He will then see to what a degree 
the English language (generally considered by foreigners as rather 
adapted to the expression of strong emotion than to the more eva- 
nescent delicacies of poesies de salon) has been made by the touch 
of genius a perfect vehicle for the most refined subtleties of artificial 
life. We cannot better conclude our remarks on this charming pro- 
duction than by observing the watchful dexterity with which Pope 
in this work has retained throughout a purely comic tone. Fully 
conscious that his strength lay in satire, and encountering incessant 
temptations to do what he knew he could do so well, he has never 
once abandoned the tone of light and good-humored persiflage, which 
his taste informed him was best in harmony with the character of his 
work. 

Subsequently to ' The Rape of the Lock ' Pope published ' The 
Temple of Fame,^ an ' Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady,' and (in 
1713) his descriptive poem of ' Windsor Forest,' which last work, 
however, had been composed at least nine years before. It was not to 
be expected that any poet, whatever might be his genius, could twice 
hit upon an idea so new, so perfect, so original, as the leading subject 
of the ' Rape of the Lock ; ' and therefore we cannot be surprised to 
find that the works just specified are, in conception, no less than in 
execution, markedly inferior to the enchanting little mock-heroic. 
Besides this, Pope's genius excelled less in the delineation of romantic 
scenes of chivalrous and allegoric splendour than in the pointed and 
satiric sketching of the follies, absurdities, and affectations of artificial 



CHAP. XII.] THE TEMPLE OF FAME, ETC. 215 

society. ' The Temple of Fame ^ is a development or modernised 
version, elegant, it is true, harmonious, and polished, of ' The House 
of Fame,' which we have already spoken of in our account of Chau- 
cer : and it is impossible not to perceive how much of the effect of 
the old poet's rich and splendid allegoric painting has disappeared in 
the process of revival. In conceptions of this kind — and in general 
in all representations of supernatural objects — the quality most in- 
dispensable for effect is an air of perfect sincerity and earnestness in 
the poet. It is this quality which communicates the peculiar 
interest and splendour to all the poetry of the Middle Ages ; and it 
is precisely in this — the feeling of faith — that consists the immense 
difference between what are generally called the classical and 
romantic schools in modern literature. The mediaeval writers seem 
to speak from the fulness of belief ; the classicists — or at least their 
modern imitators — appear to use their supernatural interventions 
(called by them with an unconscious and intense propriety ma- 
chines"^ rather as rhetorical contrivances than as articles of faith. 

In the * Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady,' Pope has exhausted all 
his powers of pathos and tenderness — not very extensive, it is true- 
— to bewail the untimely death of a person who is represented as 
driven (by causes very obscurely indicated or hinted in the poem) 
to the commission of suicide. The great defect of this work is 
want of distinctness, and an uncertainty and inconsistency of aim. 
It is exquisitely harmonized, and contains many passages which 
dwell in the reader's memory; but its passion wants intensity and 
unity of direction, and the poet seems too intent upon eloquence of 
expression to fill the reader with a belief of the sincerity of the 
passion to which he gives such elegant utterance. The feeling is 
true, indeed, but it seems to us neither very intense nor very com- 
prehensive : it is rather an echo of the accents of deep grief than 
the strong and agonised cry of true passion — rather the sorrow of 
the stage than the half-stifled and convulsive sobbing of a broken 
heart. This work forms a companion or pendant to another excel- 
lent poem of a somewhat similar character, the ' Epistle of Eloisa 
to Abelard.' In this latter work Pope's mastery over the tender 
and pathetic is exhibited in its highest force. The agonies of a 
hopeless and condemnable passion undoubtedly form a subject more 
fertile and more capable of powerful painting than the early death 
of genius, beauty, and misfortune. But though Pope has made the 
Epistle immeasurably superior to the Elegy, every candid reader 
will, we think, agree with us in allowing the enormous space which 
separates even the Epistle, eloquent, fervid, and brilliant as it is, 
from the deep, pure, and natural pathos of Chaucer, or of even many 
inferior writers among our Elizabethan dramatists. 

Of 'Windsor Forest,' we have but few words to say. Pope's 
genius, which comparatively failed in the portraiture of the simpler 
18 



216 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XII. 



and more powerful emotions of the human heart, was not likely to 
succeed in the delineation of external nature. He had, it is true, 
gazed with the eye of youth — intensely but without understanding 
— on the foliage and the streams of that woodland scenery which 
breathed such freshness into the descriptions of Father Chaucer; 
but Pope's mind wanted that deep love, that intense and quiet sym- 
pathy, which has made Chaucer, as it made Homer and Theocritus, 
and as it made Thomson and Wordsworth, the interpreters and 
hierophants of the silent oracles of the cloud, and of the leaf, and 
of the rippling water. He had the eye to perceive, but had not 
the " deuteroscopic or second sight ^' to understand the handwriting 
of Grod, inscribed like the responses of the Cumaean Sibyl upon the 
leaves of the forest. 

It was at this period of his life — in the full vigour of his extra- 
ordinary powers, and in the morning of his glory — that Pope 
■undertook the execution of his gigantic task — the translation into 
English heroic verse of the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. This 
great work, which was published by subscription, and which laid 
the foundation of the poet's worldly fortune, extended over a period 
of twelve years, from 1713 to 1725. He relates himself how 
agitated and depressed his mind was for some time by the reflection 
of the colossal labour he had undertaken ; but practice rapidly con- 
ferred facility, and his unremitting industry was perhaps assisted 
by the weakness of his health, which secured him from the inter- 
ruptions of ordinary pleasures and amusements. Of the Iliad Pope 
alone was the translator, but in the execution of the Odyssey he 
called in the aid of his friends and fellow-poets Broome and Fenton, 
to whom together was confided the translation of twelve of the 
twenty-four books. For his Homer Pope received, after deducting 
800/., which was shared between his fellow-labourers, a clear sum 
of above 8000Z. ; a circumstance not only honourable to the poet, 
but which strongly indicates the immense improvement which had 
taken place in the social position of literary men, and the move- 
ment of advance which had already begun towards the liberation 
of the highest of all professions from the degradation of dependence 
and the humiliating necessity of servile adulation. Great was the 
improvement when Pope was enabled by the profits of a single 
translation to acquire a permanent competency in the same country 
where the 'Paradise Lost' had been sold for 23/.! With the 
prudence and good sense which characterized him. Pope invested 
this sum in the purchase of a house and garden at Twickenham, 
one of the most beautiful spots on the banks of the Thames. Here 
he resided till his death, and here he entertained the greatest, the 
wisest, and the wittiest of his contemporaries; here assembled 
Atterbury and Gray^ Bathurst and Arbuthnot : — 



CHAP, xn.] 



TRANSLATION OF HOMER. 



217 



" Granville the polite, 
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write ; 
Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise. 
And Congreve loved, and Swift endured, my lays. 
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read, 
Even mitred Rochester would nod the head ; 
And St, John's self (great Dryden's friend before) 
With open arms received one poet more. 
Happy my studies, when by these approved ! 
Happier their author, when by these beloved !" 

The version of Homer, like all translations, may be looked at 
under two distinct points of view — first, as an English poem ; 
secondly, as a revival, in another age and language, of the Greek 
original. In its character of an English poem (that character under 
which it will ever be regarded by all those readers for whose behoof 
it was written — such persons, that is to say, as are unable to compare 
it with the Greek) — there can be no question as to its high merit. 
It is a rich, flowing, dignified, brilliant, and exquisitely versified 
poem, deficient it is true in intensity of feeling, and occasionally 
disfigured with trivial and meretricious ornament, but a noble monu- 
ment of genius and taste. But if we judge it in relation to its 
immortal original ; if we examine it as a revival of Homer, or an accu- 
rate and spirited copy — as faithful as the difference of nations, dialects, 
and times will admit — of the great epic of Troy, our decision will 
be very different, and very much less favourable. Perhaps the best 
(as it was the shortest) criticism ever made upon the ' Iliad' of 
Pope was the acknowledgment returned to the translator for his 
present of the volumes by Bentley, the Greek philologist : — " It is 
a pretty poem, Mr. Pope ; but you must not call it Homer.'' We 
do no injustice to Pope when we say that his translation contains 
nothing Homeric from beginning to end, except the names and the 
events. The fervid and romantic tone, the Biblical and patriarchal 
simplicity, the mythologic colouring, neither quite divine nor alto- 
gether human, the unspeakable freshness and audacity of the images 
— all that breathes of an earlier world, and of the sunny shores, and 
laughing waves, and blue sky of the old Mgean — all this is vanished 
and obliterated ; nay, the very swell and fall of the versification, 
regular in its very irregularity, like the rolling of the ocean, to 
which it has been so well compared, even this has found in the 
English no attempt — even unsuccessful, for perfectly successful 
no such attempt could ever be — at reproduction and imitation. 
Instead of this, we have the accurate and never-failing recurrence 
of the neat, elegant, well-balanced couplet, the timid propriety 
of modern manners, with all the modern reluctance to name things 
by their simple names, the substitution of vague and common- 
place ornaments — the "curta supellex" of classical French poetry 
— for the burning and picturelike words of the Greek ; and fre- 
quently the introduction, particularly in descriptive passages, of 



218 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIT. 



ideas not to be found in the original at all, and conveying absolute 
contradictions and physical impossibilities ; as, for instance, in the 
celebrated description of a moonlight night, so severely yet justly 
criticised by Wordsworth : — 

"As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, 
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light ; 
Around her throne the vivid planets roll, 
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole ; 
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, 
And tip with silver every mountain's head ; 
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise, 
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies : 
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, 
Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light." 

In the above verses there are at least a dozen offences against 
nature and reality, and these contradictions are in no case to be found 
in the Glreek ; for Homer, like Shakspeare, is invariably and minutely 
true to nature. They both knew well that the works of God are 
more beautiful than those of art. It would be superfluous to insist 
here upon the observation of the immense degree in which the effect 
of a work of fiction depends upon and is modified by the tone of 
the language in which it was written : and this increases the difficulty 
of producing a successful translation in exact ratio with the antiquity, 
and consequently with the merit, of the work. It was well remarked 
by a man of refined taste, who had been obliged, by ignorance of the 
G-reek language, to make acquaintance with the works of Homer 
first through the medium of translation, that he experienced a much 
more intense impression of the power and majesty of the great 
Ionian from the bold and barbarous literal Latin version usually 
affixed to the school editions of the bard, than from the most elaborate 
efforts at transfusing Homer into modern poetry ; and that when 
afterwards enabled to compare those early impressions with the effect 
of the original Greek, he still retained his opinion. And the fact is 
so. The rude Latin prose is a cast of the immortal statue : its grain 
is coarse, indeed, and its value is insignificant, but it preserves the 
precise outline of the godlike lineaments of the original. Our 
modern poetical translations are copies, smooth, polished, and elabo- 
rate; but feeble, timorous, and cold. These observations will explain 
the immense inferiority of all poetical imitations and paraphrases of 
the grander and more oratorical passages of the Scriptures. The 
rudest taste instantly perceives the infinite superiority of the concise 
and burning words of the Hebrew, closely and literally rendered in 
the modern versions, even though thus fidelity be often attained at 
the expense of the genius and idiomatic character of the language 
into which such version has been made. 

After this great effort of industry and poetical skill, which was 
received with a degree of enthusiasm, honourable, indeed, to Pope, 



CHAP. XII.] 



ESSAY ON MAN. 



219 



but often expressed in terms so strong as to prove how little his age 
really understood or appreciated the peculiar merits of Homer, our 
poet published his ^ Essay on Man/ a work of metaphysical and 
moral philosophy, intended to form part of a vast poetical system or 
cycle of those sciences projected by Pope. The philosophy of this 
work is neither very profound, nor the reasonings and conclusions 
(except such as are truisms) either very convincing or very just. 
The poem, in short, furnishes an additional proof of the natural 
incompatibility between the higher order of poetry and pure abstract 
ratiocination, and the want of harmony that results from their 
forcible union ; for the reasoning is generally found to injure the effect 
of the verse, at least as much as the ornament of verse detracts from 
the vigour and cogency of argument. But if any writer was ever 
calculated to surmount this natural want of accordance between 
means and end, with which we have just reproached didactic poetry 
in general, that writer was Pope. The abundant richness of ideas, 
the novelty, variety, and appropriateness of illustration, the sparkling 
point and neatness of expression, and the perfect finish and harmony 
of versification which the four epistles composing this work so prodi- 
gally display, prove that, if he has not succeeded in establishing a 
model and perfect exemplar of didactic poetry, it was only because 
such an object can never be perfectly attained by human genius. 
The argument of this brilliant composition may be briefly stated : — 
The first Epistle treats of Man in his relation to the Universe, show- 
ing the imperfections of our judgment founded upon our limited 
acquaintance with the order of nature, and suggesting that a higher 
degree of endowment would only have been productive of pain and 
misery — a conclusion which, like many other of Pope's deductions, 
involves a paradox. In the second, Man is treated as an Individual, 
i. e. with relation to himself; and the poet shows that the passions 
and desires are given him with an evident benevolence of intention, 
as by them the stock of happiness is augmented — nay, as without 
them happiness itself would be inconceivable and impossible. The 
third Epistle views Man in his relation to Society ; and in the fourth 
and last the poet discusses the various notions respecting Happiness. 
Throughout the whole of this masterly work it is impossible to 
decide whether we are most to admire the point and neatness of the 
argument, the abundant wealth of illustration, collected from a wide 
extent of reading and observation, or the enchanting harmony and 
finish of the language and versification. The couplet is carried to 
its highest perfection; and though an instrument of but limited 
compass, comparatively to the organ-like blank-verse of Milton, or 
the myriad-voiced and ever-changing dramatic versification of the 
elder drama, Pope has proved that in the hand of a master even 
this imperfect instrument could " discourse most eloquent music. 
In 1727 there appeared three volumes of Miscellanies, in prose 
18* 



22Q 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XII. 



and verse, the composition of that distinguished society of which 
Pope and Swift in poetry, and Arbuthnot in humorous prose, were 
the most brilliant ornaments. The associates, all bound together by 
the closest ties of friendship, and by a perfect similarity of tastes, 
principles, and prejudices, worked together so completely that it is 
impossible to assign to each, at least with much certainty, the por- 
tions composed by the respective fellow-labourers. The work is 
throughout sparkling with satire, wit, and humour — at least that 
humour which consists rather in an acute perception of the ludicrous 
and contemptible than in a deep sympathy with the human heart. 
The severity and occasional personality of the satire raised round 
Pope a storm of literary hatred, in many cases envenomed by reli- 
gious and political enmity ; and on these assailants Pope was after- 
wards to inflict a memorable vengeance. One article of the 
Miscellanies was a portion of a prose comic romance, or written 
caricature, intended to ridicule the vain pursuits of ill-directed 
erudition, and the solemn puerilities of scientific pedantry. Of this 
work, entitled the ' Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus,^ the idea was 
better than the execution ; many of the follies ridiculed being such, 
according to Johnson's excellent criticism, as had long ceased to be 
prevalent, and there being a general tone of coarseness and farcical 
exaggeration prevailing throughout the work. Arbuthnot, there 
can be but little doubt, was the principal autlior of this not very 
successful jeu d' esprit ; but he was much happier in his ludicrous 
^History of John Bull,' which, though referring only to temporary 
politics, and principally directed against Marlborough, has a vein of 
irresistible drollery which time cannot deprive of its charm. Indeed, 
highly as almost all the members of Pope's brilliant coterie were 
endowed with wit (and perhaps at no time in the history of Eng- 
lish literature was that quality more abundantly displayed), the 
amiable and learned Arbuthnot was the only person, with the excep- 
tion of Addison, who exhibited much of the sentiment properly 
called humour. These qualities, so nearly allied in many respects 
— for Humour bears the same relation to Wit as Imagination does 
to Fancy — yet are very rarely found much developed in the same 
period of literature — much more rarely in the same individual. 
One is the tropical plant, dazzling in colour, but scentless and un- 
fruitful ; the other the rich and life-sustaining vegetation of the 
temperate zone. They are respectively the gem and the flower — 
or rather, perhaps, the gem and the seed. 

Pope, as we have just hinted, took a terrible revenge on those 
whose envy, whose jealousy, or whose indignation had been aroused 
by the burning irony and withering sarcasm embodied in number- 
less passages of the Miscellanies. His wit, keen and polished as 
was its edge, was not always wielded by the hand of justice ; and, 
as the Chinese proverb pithily expresses it, the dart of contempt 



CHAP. XII.] 



THE DTJNCIAD. 



221 



will pierce the shell of the tortoise. The obscurest intellects, the 
coldest and most insensible of souls, will be roused into anger by 
the point of a sarcasm ; and Pope, one of whose chief and very 
natural errors was the notion that all true virtue, as well as all pure 
taste and sound morality, was concentrated in the small circle of his 
friends, raised around him a cloud of enemies, most of them in- 
dividually insignificant, and many personally contemptible, but all 
infuriated by the most intense animosity against the reigning wit 
and his clique. This nest of hornets Pope determined to destroy 
at one stroke, and he composed his admirable satire of ' The Dun- 
ciad,^ — the Iliad of the Dunces. Taking for his key-note the 
MacFlecknoe of his great predecessor, Dryden, he has given us in 
this satire one of the most sweeping, fierce, and brilliant philippics, 
in which, under the mask of a reprobation of bad writing and bad 
taste, Genius ever revenged the injuries of Self-Love. The plot or 
fable of this admirable satire is the election of a new monarch to 
fill on earth the throne of Dulness, and the various games and trials 
of skill performed by the bad writers of the day to do honour to 
the event. In this manner the poet has been enabled to introduce 
an incredible number of individuals, most of them, indeed, deserving 
of contempt in a literary point of view, but some of whom are 
attacked with a ferocity of personality totally indefensible on either 
merely literary or moral grounds. 

In richness of ideas, in strength of diction, and in intensity of 
feeling, this production surpasses all that Pope had previously done, 
and is perhaps the finest specimen of literary satire which exists in 
any language in the world. The whole vocabulary of irony is 
exhausted, the whole universe of contempt is ransacked. We find the 
combined merits of the most dissimilar satirists — the wild, fearless, 
inventive, picturesque extravagance of Aristophanes, the bitter irony 
and cold sarcasm of Lucian, the elegant raillery of Horace, and 
Juvenal's strange union of moral severity and grim pleasantry. It 
is curious to read these brilliant records of literary animosity, and to 
reflect upon the unenviable immortality which Pope's genius has 
conferred upon the meanest of scribblers and the most despicable of 
pamphleteers. Like the straws, the empty shells, and excrements 
of dead animals, which the lava has preserved for uncounted centu- 
ries, and in which the eye of the geologist beholds the records of 
past con\^ilsions, these names have been preserved uninjured through 
a period of time when many things a thousand times more valuable 
have perished for ever; and they exist, and will continue to exist, 
as long as the English language shall endure, imperishable but 
valueless memorials — the trash of literature, vitrified by the light- 
ning of indignant genius. 

In the fierce contentions which agitated the declining years of Pope 
there can be no doubt that the satirist suffered far more than his 



2m 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XTL 



victims, and that the deepest wounds dealt on others bj the keen 
and polished weapon of his sarcasm, were as nothing in comparison 
with the agonies which nerved his own arm to wield that resistless 
weapon. Genius, in its ' very definition, implies a peculiar and 
exquisite degree of sensibility, or at least sensitiveness; and it is 
but just that, when the highest gift of God is perverted to selfish 
ends, to avenge insulted vanity, to humiliate, to blacken, and to crush, 
the very exercise of that endowment should necessarily entail upon 
its perverter a bitter and inevitable retribution. God is love ; and 
his highest gift to man can only be fitly employed in deeds of love 
and charity. Personal invective and personal hate, though masked 
under the specious pretext of a zeal for good taste, is hardly a less 
reprehensible employment for high intellectual powers than sensuality 
or blasphemy; and it is fortunate that in this instance, as in all 
others, the crime brings its punishment along with it. 

Between the years 1733 and 1740 Pope gave to the world his 
' Satires, Epistles, and Moral Essays,' addressed for the most part 
to his distinguished literary friends, Bolingbroke, Arbuthnot, &c. 
These admirable compositions, considered separately, are in most 
cases directed against some prevailing vice or folly, and it is perhaps 
in them that the poet's genius is seen in its fullest splendour. 
Glowing with fancy and a rich profuseness of illustration, adorned 
with every splendour which art or industry could confer, they are 
noble and imperishable monuments of knowledge, of acuteness of 
observation, of finish, and of facility; for the poet had now attained 
that mastery in his art when the very elaboration of the workman- 
ship is concealed in the apparent ease of the execution. They 
abound in happy strokes of description, in exquisite appropriateness 
of phrase, and a thousand passages from these charming compositions 
have passed into the ordinary language of the poet's countrymen — 
a sure test of the value of a work. BLaviug been less exposed in 
the composition of this work to the evil influences of personal and 
literary enmity. Pope has avoided that air of malignant ferocity which 
defiles so much of the ' Dunciad ; ' and the tone of the Satires is in 
general far more Horatian; that is, far more in accordance with 
good taste, good breeding, and good nature. In 1742 Pope added a 
fourth book to the ' Dunciad,' describing the final advent on earth of 
the goddess of Dulness, and the prophesied millennium of ignorance, 
pedantry, and stupidity. In this he has exhibited a gorgeousness 
of colouring and a fertility of invention which would enable him to 
claim no mean place amoug merely picturesque poets. During the 
following year our indefatigable satirist, moved by the restless caprice 
of his literary enmity, published a new edition of the four books of 
the ' Dunciad,' having deposed from the throne of Dulness its former 
occupant, Theobald, a tasteless pedant and commentator on Shak- 
iipeare, whose place in " that bad eminence" was now supplied by 



CHAP. XII.] pope's satires AND EPISTLES. 



223 



Gibber, a man who had succeeded in attracting Pope's particular 
hatred. This change, made to gratify a temporary and personal dis- 
like, was in the highest degree injudicious, and as injurious to the 
poem as it was destructive of the reader's conviction (no unimport- 
ant thing for the effect of a satire) of the author's sincerity and good 
faith. Theobald was one of the worms of literature, a painful anti- 
quarian, devoting his feeble powers to the illustration of obscure 
passages in Shakspeare's writings; useful, indeed, but certainly 
humble enough to have escaped the martyrdom of a * Dunciad ^ 
immortality. The truth is, that private pique had animated Pope in 
placing Theobald at the head of the dunces. The great poet had 
himself published an edition of Shakspeare, in which his want of 
that minute antiquarian knowledge which Theobald undoubtedly 
possessed was glaringly apparent, a defect which the latter was natu- 
rally but too willing to point out. The character given to Theobald 
in the ^ Dunciad,' though of course exaggerated with all the ingenuity 
of a rich imagination and an intense jealousy, was in the main 
appropriate; but when Gibber took the commentator's place, and the 
old books, the obscure learning, the peddling pedantry, — 

" And all such reading as was never read," — 

the cold creeping industry and tasteless curiosity, which accorded 
well enough with the character of Theobald, were transferred to 
Gibber, even the warmest admirers of Pope were obliged to confess 
that hatred had blunted the great Poet's taste and destroyed his 
feeling of fitness. Gibber, then an actor of high reputation, and a 
man who has left us, in his autobiography, one of the most extra- 
ordinary combinations ever seen of vivacity, folly, wit, generosity, 
vanity, and affectation, was a character as little in accordance with 
that of Theobald as unfit to take his place as King of the Dunces. 
" The author of The Gareless Husband," as Warton justly remarks, 
was no proper king of the dunces." 

Pope died at Twickenham, on the 30th of May, 1744, after a life 
passed in incessant industry and intellectual agitation, but adorned 
with a greater share of contemporary glory than often falls to the lot 
of poets. The weakness of his frame, and his almost incessant ill- 
health, which, by precluding his engaging in the more active scenes 
and occupations of life, undoubtedly favoured the development of his 
intellectual powers, also tended to make him set too high a value on 
merely literary triumphs ; and his constitutional irritability, though 
it gave to his mind an exquisite delicacy, an almost feminine acute- 
ness, yet was calculated to increase his tendency to personal satire, 
and to deprive him of that large and generous spirit of appreciation 
which finds out what is beautiful, good, and valuable even in things 
and works most foreign from the usual field of its contemplation. 
His poetry was the consummation of what is usually called the 



224 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. 



[CHAP. xn. 



classical, but which would be much more correctly denominated the 
French school — perfect good sense, an admirable though somewhat 
pedantic propriety, polish, point, and neatness, seldom carried away 
into enthusiasm, not, as Shakspeare expresses it, — 

"A muse of fire, that would ascend 

The brightest heaven of invention," — 

but always delicate, impressive, satisfactory. In his serious and 
pathetic pieces, though the passion or the sentiment is generally 
true and natural, the expression is often unworthy of the thought 
— not from its homeliness and simplicity, however, but, on the con- 
trary, from the perpetual fear which we seem to perceive in the poet 
lest he should degrade his art by making it the expression of human 
feeling in its grand and dignified plainness and straightforwardness. 
There is always a degree, and often an unnecessary one, of orna- 
ment, graceful, it is true, and appropriate : but we remember that 
the veiled Venus is the production of an already degenerating art. 

Almost exactly contemporary with Pope lived an author whose 
poetry, singular, original, and strongly individual, enjoyed a high 
though certainly inferior reputation. This was Edward Young, the 
ingenious and often sublime melancholy of whose 'Night Thoughts' 
obtained numberless readers and admirers among the poet's own 
countrymen, and powerfully contributed at the same time to lead 
foreigners, and especially Frenchmen, into that false estimate of the 
national character of the English people, and those false notions of 
the general tone of English literature, which have been long so 
absurdly prevalent even among the best informed of continental 
critics. Madame de Stael, among others, has attempted to derive 
the alleged melancholy which she supposes to mark the English 
character, and the supposed gloom and despondency which so many 
superficial observers have thought they discovered in our literature, 
from the influence of the poems of Ossian and the mournful con- 
templations of Young 1 

The fallacy of such an opinion hardly requires or admits of a 
serious refutation. Without stopping to show that the impossible 
caricature embodied in the so-called poems of Ossian — the carica- 
ture of a state of manners that never had nor never could have had 
a real existence in any age or country — that this extravagant carica- 
ture, we say, ever exerted on English literature any perceptible in- 
fluence, or that MacPherson's bold forgery ever excited in society 
any sentiment beyond that of a passing and transitory wonder, we 
might allege that Young's poems have never been so extensively 
read in England as to warrant the critic in considering him as one 
of the powerful and influential names in English literature. In- 
deed, it may be afiirmed that the peculiar merits of Young are in 
no sense such as would be relished by a very extensive class of 



CHAP. XII.] 



YOUNG. 



225 



readers, and, appealing rather to the intellect than to the sensibili- 
ties, would not be capable of giving their author that hold upon the 
national mind of his countrymen, without which it is vain to talk 
of a writer being either the guide or the reflection of the spirit of 
his country. The fact is, that, when English literature began to be 
known to foreigners, it was naturally that department of English 
letters whose tone, form, and spirit was most consonant with the 
then taste of continental readers, and consequently it was precisely 
those productions which possessed least of the peculiar idiosyncrasy 
of national character. Thus the Frenchman, in forming his esti- 
mate of the general chai-acter of the English muse, imagined as the 
principal features of its portrait, not the wild richness of the Eliza- 
bethan prose and poetry, its unstudied fancy, its playful wisdom, its 
all-embracing depth of philosophical verity, but the neat elegance 
of Pope, or the fantastic and epigrammic sadness of Young. 

Edward Young was born in 1681, and educated at All Souls' 
College, Oxford : the greater and earlier part of his long life (for 
he died at 84) was busily occupied in the pursuit of literary and 
political distinction, in not very successful struggles after fame as a 
poet and as a courtier. Having met at the hands of several patrons, 
and particularly at those of the infamous Duke of Wharton, with 
many overwhelming disappointments. Young, at the age of fifty, 
took clerical orders, and passed the remainder of his life in uneasy 
retirement, satirising those pursuits in which he had failed, and to 
which he appears to have looked back with unceasing regret, thinly 
veiled, however, with a somewhat affected tone of moral self-abne- 
gation and philosophic dignity. His first important work^was the 
' Love of Fame,' which he qualifies as ' The Universal Passion.' 
) This is a keen, vigorous, aud manly satire, divided into seven 
epistles, and strongly recalling some of the finer peculiarities of 
Pope, whose style it resembles more than most of Young's other 
productions, particularly in its being written in the rhymed couplet. 
But while we find in this work strong traces of Pope's clearness, 
directness, energy, and point, we shall look in vain for his exquisite 
propriety of diction, his gay and playful airiness, and that happy 
tone of good-nature and badinage which he possessed, like his 
master Horace, in so eminent a degree. Young's satire is, to a 
certain degree, more Juvenalian, but at the same time we are 
haunted, in reading it, with an uncomfortable consciousness that the 
moral declamation which so eloquently abounds in it was the off- 
spring rather of disappointed ambition than of the injured dignity 
of virtue. On entering the Church, Young by no means relinquish- 
ed all hopes of distinction ; he wrote a panegyric on the king, for 
which he was rewarded with a pension, and is related to have been 
deeply disappointed at being afterwards refused a bishopric — a 
favour withheld by the minister on the ground of the devotion to 



226 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XII. 



retirement so frequently and emphatically expreSvSed in his works. 
This is a remarkable instance of the malicious ingenuity of courts : 
and this refusal, there can be but little doubt, tended to deepen the 
gloom which pervades all Young's poetry, and particularly his later 
works. 

Young married a lady of rank, daughter of the Earl of Lichfield, 
and widow of Colonel Lee, to whose two children the poet was 
tenderly attached. The death of this lady, which was followed, 
though at considerable intervals, by that of the two children, pro- 
duced a powerful impression on Young's mind, and had, it is probable, 
a great influence in suggesting the tone and subject of his last and 
greatest work, the 'Night Thoughts.^ / It is this poem upon which 
his reputation, in England as elsewhere, is principally founded ; and 
we shall endeavour, in giving a short account of its nature and 
merits, to show the causes of its great popularity. It is a series of 
reflections on the most awful and important subjects which can 
engage the attention of the man or of the Christian — on Life, Death, 
and Immortality — and is in many passages executed in a manner 
worthy of the tremendous character of the subject. \ The poem is 
divided into nine books, or Nights, each of which pursues some 
train of thought in harmony with the supposed feelings of the poet 
at the time of composition. These feelings are modified by the deep 
grief arising from the recent loss of many beloved objects, and from 
the contemplation of the total ruin of a surviving person, "the 
young Lorenzo," by some supposed to be the portrait of the poet's 
own son, but who is probably nothing more than an embodiment of 
imaginary atheism and unavailing remorse and despair. There can 
be no doubt that the gloom of these unhappy events was intentionally 
aggravated and exaggerated by the poet, in order to give greater 
weight and impressiveness to the reflections which he pursues. 
Whether this want of good faith be real, or only existing in the 
reader's imagination, it is singularly injurious to the eflect of the 
poem ; for we are of course apt to look upon the deep gloom which 
Young has thrown over his picture rather as a trick of art than as 
the terrific thunder-cloud — the "earthquake and eclipse" of nature : 
and the diminution of sublimity in our minds produced by this 
want of sincerity is in exact proportion to the impression that would 
have been made had this eloquent grief been altogether real. 

The style, too, of Young in the ' Night Thoughts' is of a kind 
little capable of keeping alive those awful feelings of wonder and 
sublimity which his genius is so powerful in evoking. In him the 
intellect had an undue predominance over the imagination and the 
sensibility; and hardly does he raise up before us some grand image of 
death, of power, or of immortality, than he turns aside to seek after 
remote and fantastic allusions, which instantly destroy the potent 
charm. Few writers are so unequal as Young, or rather, few writers 



CHAP. XII.] 



NIGHT THOUGHTS. 



227 



of such powerful and acknowledged genius were ever so deficient in 
comparative or critical taste. To liim every idea seemed good, pro- 
vided only it was strong, original, and ingenious; and as bis subject 
was precisely the one least suited to tbis species of intellectual 
sword-play, the conceits, unexpected analogies, and epigrammatic 
turns of which he was so fond, are as offensive and incongruous as 
would be the placing of the frippery fountains and clipped yews and 
trim parterres of Versailles among the glaciers and precipices of 
Alpine scenery. This false taste for ingenious and far-fetched allu- 
sions Young may have in some measure acquired from the study of 
Crowley, Donne, and other writers of what was incorrectly called 
the "metaphysical'^ school of English poetry; but it is easy to 
observe that wbat in amatory or encomiastic compositions is nothing 
but false ornament and perverted ingenuity, becomes, when intro- 
duced into a work of a sublime and religious character, a great and 
unpardonable offence against good taste and propriety. JLt is impossi- 
ble to open any page of Young without finding something grand, 
true, and striking : he is full of 

"thoughts that wander through eternity." 

I He "speaks as one having authority;" and his accents are weighty, 
solemn and awakening, when he exhibits to us the vanity and 
nothingness of this life, and the nobility of the human soul — its 
aspirations, its destinies, and its hopes. / But the mind of Young 
was ever on the watch for an opportunity for anything striking and 
new ; his genius has " lidless dragon eyes," a restless, unappeasable 
vigilance; and no sooner does he perceive the slightest opening for an 
unexpected and epigrammatic turn, than he turns aside to pursue 
these butterflies of wit, these "Dalilahs of the imagination.'^ Con- 
sequently there are few poets whose works present a greater number 
of detached glittering apophthegms — none who is so little adapted 
to give continuous pleasure to a reader of cultivated taste. Like 
the painter, he is sometimes equal to Raphael, sometimes inferior to 
himself. 

It would be unjust were we to refuse our tribute of acknowledg- 
ment and admiration to the vast richness and fertility of imagina- 
tion displayed by this powerful writer : it is the fertility of a tropical 
climate; or, rather, it is the abundant vegetation of a volcanic 
region ; flowers and weeds, the hemlock and the vine, the gaudy 
and noxious poppy, and the innocent and life-supporting wheat — 
all is brought forth with a boundless and indiscriminate profusion. 
Hence, in spite of the gloomy nature of Young's subject — a gloom 
yet further augmented by the half-affected tone of his language — 
his writings are often studied with rapture by the youthful, and by 
those whose taste is yet unformed ; and there are not many works 
whose perusal is fraught at the same time with more danger and 
19 



228 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIL 



more advantage. His happinesses of diction are innumerable. What 
can be finer either in images or in sound than his phantoms of past 
glory and power ? — 

" What visions rise ! 
What triumphs, toils imperial, arts divine, 
In withered laurels glide before my sight ! 
What lengths of far-famed ages, hillow'd high 
With human agitation, roll along 
In unsubstantial images of air ! 
The melancholy ghosts of dead renown, 
Whispering faint echoes of the world's applause ; 
With penitential aspect, as they pass. 
All point at earth, and hiss at human pride" — 

or that noble and yet familiar image, so justly praised by Campbell — 

"Where final Ruin fiercely drives 
Her ploughshare o'er creation" — 

or the bold impersonation of Death, who is introduced 
"To tread out empires and to quench the stars." 

On the other hand, what can be in worse taste than the comparison 
of the celestial orbs with diamonds set in a ring to adorn the finger 
of Omnipotence, which ring, by a supererogation of absurdity, is 
afterwards called a seaZ-ring ? — 

" A constellation of ten thousand gems, 
Set in one signet, flames on the right hand 
Of Majesty Divine ; the blazing seal, 
That deeply stamps, on all created mind, 
Indelible, his sovereign attributes." 

But perhaps the most easily perceived defect in this extraordinary 
work is the want of a plan and interest pervading the whole, and 
producing a natural connection or dependence between the various 
parts of the poem. Of course it would be too much to expect that 
a meditative or contemplative composition should contain a fable or 
narrative of progressive interest ; but, at the same time, we have a 
right in every work consisting of many parts to look for a certain 
degree of dependence and mutual coherency. This condition is 
assuredly not fulfilled by the ' Night Thoughts,' the parts of which 
have no necessary connection, and may be displaced in their order 
without any injury to the efi'ect of the whole. This blemish, per- 
haps to a certain degree inevitable, is but too much aggravated by 
the fragmentary and paroxysmal character of Young's style, pro- 
ducing its efiect upon the reader, as Campbell justly and acutely 
remarks, rather by short abrupt ictuses of surprise than by sustained 
splendour of thought or steady progression of imagery. 



CHAP. XIIT.] 



SWIFT : HIS CAREER. 



229 



CHAPTER XIII. 

SWIFT AND THE ESSAYISTS. 

Coarseness of Manners in the 17th and 18th centuries — Jonathan Swift — 
Battle of the Books — Tale of a Tub — Pamphlets — Stella and Venessa — 
Drapier's Letters — Voyages of Gulliver — Minor Works — Poems — Steele- 
and Addison — Cato — Tatler — Spectator — Samuel Johnson — Prose Style 
— Satires of 'London' and ' The Vanity of Human W^ishes' — Rasselas 
— Journey to the Hebrides — Lives of the Poets — Edition of Shakspeare — 
Dictionary — Rambler and Idler. 

It can bardlj, we think, be denied, that the Kevolution of 1688 
either produced or was accompanied by certain social effects at least 
temporarily injurious to society in England, and lowering the tone 
of sentiment, not only in political matters, but also, which is of much 
more importance to our subject, in the literary character of the times. 
Something of the old courtesy, something of the romantic and ideal 
in social intercourse between man and man, and still more preceptibly 
between man and woman, the Revolution appears to have annihilated; 
a more selfish, calculating, and material spirit begins to be perceptible 
in society, and consequently to be reflected in books. Language 
becomes a little ruder, more disputative, and more combative — the 
intellect now plays a more prominent part than either the fancy or 
the sensibility — the head has overbalanced the heart. 

Of the general prevalence of such a tone of society there can be 
no more conclusive proof than the personal and literary character of 
Jonathan Swift; a man of robust and mighty intellect, of great and 
ready acquirements, of an indomitable will, activity, and perseverance, 
but equally deficient in heart as a man and in disinterestedness as a 
patriot. The Dean of St. Patrick's was indeed a rarely-gifted, 
prompt, and vigorous intellect : in his particular line of satire he is 
unequalled in literature ; he did more and more readily what few 
beside him could have attempted ; he played during his life a pro- 
minent and important part in the political drama of his country, and 
established himself by his writings among the prose classics of the 
world : but he was, as a man, heartless, selfish, unloving, and 
unsympathising ; as a writer, he degraded and lowered our reverence 
for the divinity of our nature ; and as a statesman, he appears to 
have felt no nobler spur to the exertion of his gigantic powers than 
the sting of personal pique and the pang of discontented ambition. 

He was born in Dublin in the year 1667; a posthumous child, 
left dependent upon the uncertain charity of relations for support, 
and the not less precarious favour of the great for protection. This 



230 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XHI. 



unfortunate entrance into life appears to have tinged with a darker 
shade of misanthropic gloom a temperament naturally saturnine, 
and to have inspired something of that morbid melancholy which 
ultimately deepened into hypochondria, and terminated so terribly 
in madness and idiotcy. Swift at the beginning of his career received 
the aid and protection of Sir William Temple, who enabled him to 
complete his education at Oxford, and in whose house he made that 
acquaintance with Mrs. Johnson (the daughter of Temple's steward) 
which became the source, to Swift, of a signal instance of retributive 
justice, and to the unfortunate lady of such a sad celebrity under 
the name of Stella. Swift did not begin to write until he had 
reached the tolerably mature age of thirty-four; and this circumstance 
will not only account for the extraordinary force and mastery which 
his style from the first exhibited, but it will prove the absence in 
Swift's mind of any of that purely literary ambition which incites 
the student 

"To scorn delights, and live laborious days." 

Throughout the whole of his literary career Swift never appears to 
have cared to obtain the' reputation of a mere writer : his works (the 
greater number of which were political pamphlets, referring to tempo- 
rary events, and composed for the purpose of attaining temporary 
objects) seem never to have been considered by him otherwise than 
as means, instruments, or engines for the securing of their particular 
object. The ruling passion of his mind was an intense and arrogant 
desire for political power and notoriety ; or, as he says himself, " All 
my endeavours, from a boy, to distinguish myself, were only for want 
of a great title and fortune, that I might he used like a lord hy those 
who have an opinion of my parts — whether right or wrong, it is no 
great matter." This was indeed but a low and creeping ambition ; 
and the fruit — at least as far as any augmentation of human happi- 
ness is concerned — is worthy of the tree. 

The protege of Temple, Swift was naturally, at the beginning of 
his public life, a Whig; and his first achievements in the warfare of 
party were made under the Whig banner. He also exhibited his 
attachment to his patron by taking part in the famous controversy 
respecting the comparative superiority of the ancients or the moderns ; 
a controversy of which Temple was the most distinguished champion. 
Swift wrote the ' Battle of the Books,' a short satirical pamphlet, full 
of that coarse invective and savage personality which afterwards 
rendered him so famous and so formidable. Some of the incidents 
of the battle are worthy of the hand which painted the Yahoos 
or the Projectors' College of Laputa. The principal object of attack 
in this fierce and brutal piece of drollery was Bentley. 

In 1704 appeared Swift's extraordinary satiric allegory, entitled 
* The Tale of a Tub,' in which the author pretends to give an account 



CHAP. XIII.] 



TALE OF A TUB — PAMPHLETS. 



231 



of the rise and policy of the three most important sects into which 
Christendom has unhappily been divided — the Romanist, Lutheran 
(with which he identifies the Church of England,) and Calvinistic 
Churches. 

These events are recounted in the broadest, boldest, most unreserved 
language of farcical extravagance ; the three religions being typified 
by three brothers, Peter (the Church of Rome, or St. Peter), Martin 
(that of Luther), and Jack (John Calvin). The corruptions of the 
Romish Church, and the renunciation of those errors at the Refor- 
mation, are allegorised by a number of tassels, fringes, and shoulder- 
knots, which the three brothers superadd to the primitive simplicity 
of their coats (the practice and belief of the Christian religion). 
These extraneous ornaments Martin strips off cautiously and gradu- 
ally ; but poor J ack, in his eagerness, nearly reduces himself to a 
state of nature. Nothing can exceed the richness of imagination 
with which Swift places in a ridiculous or contemptible light the 
extravagances of the three brothers. It must be observed that he 
invariably sides with Martin, and pursues the fantastic pranks of 
Jack with a pitiless and envenomed malignity that shows how richly 
nature had gifted him for the trade of political and religious lampooning, 
This strange work is divided into chapters, between which are inter- 
posed an equal number of what the author calls "digressions,^' and 
which latter, like the main work, are absolute treasuries of droll allu- 
sion and ingenious adaptation of obscure and uncommon learning. 

In 1708 Swift turned Tory; and he was soon found writing as 
nervously, fluently, and vigorously on the side of his new patrons as 
ever he had done in support of his former one. He now published 
successively a number of able pamphlets, under the title of ' Senti- 
ments of a Church-of-England Man,' ' Letters on the Application of 
the Sacramental Test,' and the admirable ^Apology for Christianity.' 
In this last production, under his usual veil of grave irony, he shows 
the ill consequences which would result from an abolition of the 
Christian religion : among the rest, for example, proving what a loss 
it would be to the freethinker and scoffer and espj^it fort to be 
deprived of so fertile a subject of ridicule as is now afforded by the 
principles and practice of our religion. 

About the same time, Swift, in a succession of humorous jeux 
d' esprit, ridiculed the credulity of many classes of persons at that 
time as to the predictions of astrology, and the gross ignorance of 
the almanac-makers and other needy and obscure quacks, who 
administered food to the public appetite for the marvellous. 

In 1712 he wrote a species of half-history, half-pamphlet, entitled 
' The Conduct of the Allies,' severely reflecting upon the Duke of 
Marlborough ; and nearly at the same time he became acquainted 
with the beautiful and most unhappy Vanessa, whose real name was 
Vanhomrigh. This young lady had been in some measure educated 
19* 



232 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIIT. 



by Swift ; and the fair pupil conceived for her instructor a passion 
of that deep, durable, and all-engrossing character, which, for weal 
or woe, fills and occupies a whole existence, and to whose intensity 
not even time can apply any real alleviation. It is not certain how 
far a thoughtless vanity, or an almost incredible hardness of heart, 
or a taint of that insanity which was to cloud the setting of Swift's 
bright and powerful intellect, may have led him to sport with the 
affections of this unfortunate girl ; but, at the very time when he 
was allowing her to indulge in dreams of happiness which he knew 
were vain, Swift was keeping up with Stella, the former victim of 
his selfish vanity, the hope of a union which, if it came at all, was 
certain to be but too tardy a reparation. Vanessa died of a broken 
heart, on learning the relations in which Swift stood, and had all 
along remained, with respect to Stella ; and Stella appears ultimately 
to have received a legal right to Swift's protection as a husband. 
But this act of justice came too late either to restore her ruined 
happiness or to save her life. For this double act of heartlessness 
Swift was to suffer a terrible and just retribution. 

At the accession to the English throne of the House of Hanover, 
Swift retired to Ireland ; for the Whigs were now in power. But 
in leaving the more busy stage of English politics. Swift carried with 
him the greatest powers to annoy and harass the government at a 
distance ; and he soon arrived at a pitch of popularity among his 
own countrymen which has never been surpassed — perhaps never 
equalled — even in the heated atmosphere of Irish politics. Taking 
advantage of a species of monopoly (apparently not much more 
unjust and oppressive than such privileges usually are) which the 
government was about to grant to a certain William Wood, and the 
object of which was to admit into Ireland a considerable sum of 
copper money to be coined by Wood, Swift succeeded in raising 
against the government which granted, and the speculator who obtain- 
ed, the obnoxious monopoly, so violent a storm of Irish indignation, 
that not only was it found impossible to execute the project, but an 
insurrection was very nearly excited; or to use Swift's energetic 
answer to Archbishop Boulter, who once accused him of having 
excited the popular fury against the government, If I had lifted 
my finger, they would have torn you to pieces I" The engine of 
this vehement movement was the publication (in a Dublin newspaper) 
of a succession of letters, signed " M. B. Drapier," written by Swift 
in the character of a Du]3lin tradesman, and a most admirable speci- 
men of consummate skill in political writing for the people. 

In 1726 appeared the satiric romance of "Grulliver," undoubtedly 
the greatest and most durable monument of Swift's style and 
originality of conception. ' Gulliver,' being a work of universal 
satire, will be read as long as the corruptions of human nature 
render its innumerable ironic and sarcastic strokes applicable and 



CHAP. XITI.] 



GULLIVER. 



233 



intelligible to bnraan beings; and even were tbe follies and base- 
nesses of humanity so far purged away that men should no longer 
need the sharp and bitter medicine of satire, it would-still be read 
with little less admiration and delight for the wonderful richness of 
invention it displays, and the exquisite art with which the most 
impossible and extravagant adventures are related — related so 
naturally as to cheat us into a momentary belief in their reality. 
The book consists of an account of the strange adventures of the 
hero in whose person it is written. Nothing can be better than the 
dexterity with which Swift has identified himself — particularly at 
the beginning — with the character of a plain, rough, honest 
surgeon of a ship, and the minute verisimilitude which pervades his 
relation — a verisimilitude kept up with surprising watchfulness, 
even in the least details and descriptions of an imaginary world. 
Lemuel Grulliver, after being shipwrecked, all his companions having 
perished, finds himself landed in the country of Lilliput, the in- 
habitants of which are about six inches high, and in which all the 
objects, natural and artificial, are in exact proportion to the people. 
We have a most amusing description of the court, the capital, and 
the government of this pigmy empire ; and while exciting our 
incessant interest by the prodigality of invention exhibited, and the 
wonderful richness of fancy, all these descriptions, as well as the 
account of Gulliver's adventures in Lilliput, are made the vehicle 
of incessant strokes of satire, directed not only against the vices and 
follies of mankind (thus held up to ridicule in the disguise of these 
human insects), but against contemporary persons and intrigues. It 
is hardly necessary to remark, that what is of general application 
now possesses a much greater interest than many of the sly tempo- 
rary allusions which probably gave most delight when the book 
appeared. In the second part of the fiction our honest Gulliver 
visits a nation of giants, where we find the same carefully calculated 
proportion between the people of the country (represented as sixty 
feet high) and the relative size of their trees, animals, houses, 
utensils, and so on. In Brobdignag the illusion is perhaps even 
more artfully kept up than it is in tlie description of Lilliput ; the 
size — so enormous, yet always so perfectly in accordance with the 
scale pre-established — of the various objects being here generally 
indicated, or rather hinted in a parenthesis, than elaborately de- 
tailed. What can be more richly comic, for instance, than the 
conflagration of the capital of Lilliput, the court intrigues, the grand 
review of the army, Gulliver's capture of the entire fleet of Ble- 
fuscu, or the terrible schisms of the Big-endians and Little-endians ? 
What can exhibit a more fertile conception, or a more truly Ilabela3- 
sian drollery, than many of the adventures at Lorbrulgrud, the 
metropolis of the gigantic Brobdignagians ; the scene in which 
poor Gulliver is carried up to the palace-roof by the monkey; the 



2B4 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIII. 



enmities and spiteful tricks of the queen's dwarf, " who was of the 
lowest stature that was ever seen in that country (for I verily think 
he was not full thirty feet high);'' the description of the maids of 
honour; and the battles of Gulliver with flies, wasps, rats, and 
linnets ? The satiric aim is the same in both parts of the fiction, 
though attained by different roads. In Lilliput, the author shows 
us how contemptible would be human passions, war, ambition, and 
science, were they exhibited by the insect inhabitants of a micro- 
scopic country. In Brobdignag, he makes us perceive, by as it 
were reversing the telescope, the extreme meanness and insignifi- 
cance which our institutions, pursuits, and actions would exhibit to 
beings endowed with gigantic powers. In the second part of the 
romance he represents Gulliver as giving to the king of the giants 
— a wise and pacific monarch — a description of human warfare, 
government, and society; and he makes the king conclude, from 
the little stranger's narrative, " that, by what I have gathered from 
your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wringed 
and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your 
natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that 
nature ever suffered to crawl on the surface of the earth." Now 
this, we apprehend, which is but a fair specimen of the general 
conclusions of this satire, and indeed the general drift of most of 
Swift's writings, is neither just nor useful. To be truly powerful, 
satire must be discriminating; and this sweeping contempt and 
reprobation not only defeats its own object, but is from the true 
purpose of satiric painting — that of rendering the species better, 
wiser, and more innocent. Nor must we omit here to speak of a 
blemish which disfigures all Swift's writings, though perhaps it is 
not more prominently offensive in ^Gulliver' than in some of his 
other works, particularly his poems. It is a stain which appears to 
have been, from some strange peculiarity of mental constitution, 
inherent in Swift's character : we allude to the passion which he 
seems to have had to seek after images of pure physical disgust and 
loathsomeness. No writer was ever more truly moral and virtuous 
than Swift, none more studious to hold up vice and folly to the con- 
tempt and execration of mankind ; so that this defect in no sense 
partakes of that detestable ingenuity which makes some writers 
pander to the vilest propensities of our nature, nor even of that 
exaggerated warmth of invective under whose influence some satirists 
(as Juvenal, for instance) have draAvn too warm and highly-coloured 
pictures of the vices they attack, and thus, like Jaques, done 

"mischievous foul sin in chiding sin." 

No ; Swift's offences against delicacy are not of this kind : they cannot 
be said to excite the passions, but they raise the gorge ; they make 
us shudder, not with moral repulsion, .but with physical disgust. Of 



CHAP. XIII.] 



GULLIVER. 



235 



all men of superemment genius, Swift appears to have tad the least 
sympathy with what is beautiful, the least enthusiasm for what is 
sublime. The very force and might of his style consists in its being 
level, plain, prosaic, logical, and unimaginative. But his taste for 
images of absolute physical filthiness we believe to be peculiar to 
him : the physiologist might discover its cause. 

The third part of this celebrated fiction describes the imaginary 
countries of Laputa, a flying island, inhabited by speculative philoso- 
phers, devoted to mathematics and music; which gives Swift the 
opportunity to ridicule the follies of pedantic science. From thence 
the traveller descends to Balnibarbi, a land occupied by projectors. 
The most notable passage of this part of the work is the description 
of the academy, which is a not very happy imitation of the college 
of philosophers so admirably depicted in the second part of Rabelais' 
immortal extravaganza. Besides, Swift's ridicule in this part of the 
work is often deficient in point and propriety; nor was the author 
sufficiently versed either in physical science or ancient learning to be 
able to ridicule with much effect the abuses of the one or the follies 
of the other. Many of the objects, too, which he has introduced, 
are altogether too disgusting and offensive to form proper features 
even in a satiric fiction. Caricature has its decencies and its biense- 
ances no less than historic or romantic painting. Rabelais, it is 
true, abounds in coarse and indecent images, no less than in the 
wildest extravagance of burlesque; but we should remember the 
almost frantic tone of animal spirits which pervades his work, so 
different from the grave simplicity of Swift: and we must keep in 
mind the period at which the cure of Meudon wrote, obliging him, 
at the risk of life and liberty, never for one moment to let drop the 
antic mask of buffoonery under which he so keenly satirises the 
superstitions of the Church and the vices of the world. Moreover, 
Rabelais was (due allowance being made for the difference of their 
respective epochs) a far more learned man than Swift. He was 
also a far more genial spirit ; at least equal in wit, and immeasurably 
superior in humour. He knew more, and he also loved more. 
Swift was admirably characterised by Coleridge as " anima Rabe- 
laesii habitans in sicco/' ihe soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry 
place. 

The next strange country visited is Glubbdubdrib, an island 
inhabited by a people of magicians, who evoke, for the amusement 
of the traveller, the spirits of many great men of antiquity ; thus 
giving the author an opportunity to indulge his satiric vein. But 
this portion of the book is generally found to be exceedingly poor 
and flat. The idea is excellent, but very little has been made of it ; 
and we neither laugh nor admire when Hannibal is called up from 
the shades to assure us that, " in passing the Alps, he had not a 
drop of vinegar in his camp," or Aristotle to predict to Descartes 



236 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIII. 



that the Newtonian doctrine would as certainly be exploded as the 
vortices of the French philosopher. 

GruUiver next finds his way to Lnggnagg, in which country he 
has the opportunity of perceiving how miserable would be the conse- 
quence of human beings receiving a privilege of eternal life, unac- 
companied by corresponding health, strength, and intellect; a reserva- 
tion which seems rather unnecessary, and a kind of peliiio principii. 
In point of description, however, nothing can be finer, more powerful, 
and Juvenalian in its gloomy energy, than Swift's picture of the 
wretched Stuldbrugs^ the unhappy possessors of "an immortality of 
woe." 

The fourth voyage of Gulliver carries him to the country of the 
Houyhnhnms ; and is remarkable for a deeper, fiercer, intenser flame 
of satiric fury than any of the three preceding parts. In the voyage 
to Lilliput he chiefly ridiculed the persons and events of contempo- 
rary politics ; in the government of Brobdignag he gives us a kind 
of model of his notions of good government and of a patriot king ; 
in Laputa, &c., he mocks at the abuses of science and learning; but 
in the last voyage, the current of his satire, deepening and widening 
as it rolls, envelops, like some vast inundation, all the institutions of 
civilized society, and all the passions of our human nature. He 
represents a country in which horses are the ruling and supreme 
beings, while man is degraded to the rank of a filthy noxious, and 
untamable brute, retaining, with some relics and rough outlines of 
the human form, all our villanous passions and base appetites exhibi- 
ted in complete nakedness. Setting aside the outrageous improba- 
bility of the leading idea — viz. that of making horses change place 
with men in the social system of nature — it cannot be doubted that 
the ferocity of the satire is excessive and absurd, and appears to 
have been inspired rather by the rabid instinct of an unreasoning 
misanthropy, than to have been dictated by the legitimate anger of 
indignant virtue. " It is an ill bird," says the good old proverb, 
^' that fouls its own nest and any man, possessed of so admirable 
and commanding an intellect as that of Swift, who should give us 
as the result of observations on human nature, collected through a 
long life passed in full communion with the greatest and best of his 
own country, such a picture as that of the Yahoos — a picture whose 
every tint and line testifies the real, sincere, unafiected hatred and 
contempt which guided the artist's hand in tracing it — such a man, 
we repeat, lays himself open to the charge either of having drawn 
not a portrait but a gross and odious caricature, or of having his eye 
grievouwsly blinded and perverted by prejudice. 

Besides these two great prose satires, the ' Tale of a Tub' and the 
^ Voyages of Gulliver,' Swift's collected works contain a vast number 
of smaller ludicrous compositions, all of them bearing the stamp of 
the author's mind — originality, vigorous plainness of manner, and a 



CHAP. XIII.] 



swift's poems. 



237 



perfect acquaintance with all the minutige of social intercourse. 
Among others we may mention his admirable mock-serious treatise 
called ' Directions to Servants/ in which; under ironical precepts, he 
has exhibited the profoundest knowledge of all the mysteries of the 
kitchen and the servants' hall. In his ' Treatise on Polite Conversa- 
tion' he has given us a similarly ironical compendium of the coarse 
jokes, the vulgar repartees, the pert and proverbial expressions which 
at that time formed the staple of fashionable dialogue. The picture 
is of course exaggerated, but the outlines are true. It was an age 
when fine gentlemen and ladies absolutely piqued themselves on their 
ignorance, and when what were called, in the elegant phraseology of 
the day, "bites" and '^selling of bargains/' formed the principal 
enlivenment of fashionable society. 

During his whole life Swift continued from time to time to compose 
pieces of poetry of various kinds ; and standing, as he did, upon the 
very pinnacle of popularity, it is not surprising that he should have 
obtained a high reputation as a poet. One quality for the art he 
assuredly possessed in an eminent degree, that of originality ; and 
his verses, generally written on particular occasions, and often as 
personal or party lampoons, have certainly the merit of perfect ease, 
fluency, and sincerity. His more important pieces are written in the 
octo-syllabic rhyme of Prior and Gray; and though they abound in 
good sense, acute remark, and intense severity of allusion, they 
possess none of the higher qualities of poetry : not much harmony, 
no depth of feeling, no (or very rare) splendour of language. They 
are, like their author, dry, hard, and cold. In ^ Cadenus and Vanes- 
sa' he has given a rather dull description of the commencement of 
the sad story of the unhappy Hester Yanhomrigh ] in the ^ Legion 
Club' the most intense expression of hatred and contempt (directed 
against the Irish Parliament) that human pen perhaps has ever 
traced, or human heart conceived ; and scattered through his works 
are a multitude of farcical little compositions, some of them epigrams 
and political pasquinades, others trifles meant merely to amuse the 
privacy of a friendly circle ; but all of which are marked with as 
much excellence as the subject would admit — trifling toys of the 
ingenuity, but toys constructed by a master's hand. His best poems 
of any length are the verses entitled 'A Rhapsody on Poetry,' in 
Ihe beginning of which are several passages of great vigour and more 
warmth of expression than is usually to be found in Swift; and the 
other called ' Verses on my Own Death, in which, with admirable 
nature, drollery, and vivacity, he describes the various feelings with 
which that event would be received among his friends, acquaintance, 
and enemies. 

This event was not now very remote; but ere this great wife 
arrived at that repose which an excruciating and incurable disease 
must have made him view with hope, he was destined to pass through 



238 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIIT. 



the severest ordeal to whicli our nature can be submitted. He was 
to travel, while yet living, through "the valley and the shadow of 
death.'' 

During the whole of his life he had been grievously afflicted with 
attacks of deafness, giddiness, and pain in the head ; and his gloomy 
and despondent spirit seems to have looked forward with prophetic 
dread to insanity as the probable termination of his existence. An 
affecting anecdote is related by Dr. Young of Swift having once 
been found mournfully gazing on a noble oak, whose upper branches 
had been struck by lightning : " I shall be like that tree," said 
Swift, "I shall die first a-top.'' Nor were these melancholy predic- 
tions falsified by the event. About the year 1736 he was attacked 
by repeated fits of pain and loss of memory, and in the composition 
of that terrific invective the 'Legion Club' he was seized by a spe- 
cies of fit, from which he never recovered sufficiently to finish the 
poem. The long and melancholy interval (of nine years) intervening 
between this time and his death was one uninterrupted succession of 
mental and bodily suffering. He passed from a deplorable and 
furious mania to a state of idiotcy ; and the active politician, the 
resistless polemic, the satirist, the poet, and the wit, died, as he 
himself had feared and half predicted, " in a rage, like a poisoned 
rat in a hole;" — 

"Swift expired a driveller and a show." 

This event took place, October 19th, 1745, at Dublin, and excited 
among the lower and middle classes of that cit}^, whose friend, 
adviser, and defender he had been, the liveliest expressions of grief 
and lamentation. "The Dean" was buried in his own cathedral of 
St. Patrick's, and his place of sepulture marked by an epitaph com- 
posed by himself, some words of which form the best and most 
appropriate commentary that the wit of man could have invented 
upon the writings and the character of this illustrious but most 
unhappy man : — 

"Hie depositum est corpus 
Jonathan Swift, S. T. P. 
Ubi scBva Iiidignatio 
Ulterius cor lacerare nequit." 

We have taken occasion in the preceding pages, to advert more 
than once to the coarse and corrupted state of society which prevailed 
in England about the accession of William III., and seems to have 
continued with little modification through the reigns of at least the 
first two Georges. That this brutal, selfish, and vulgar tone of 
social intercourse was at once a result and an indication of a deep 
and general deterioration of morals is more than probable : it partly 
arose from the unfortunate mixture of politics in the whole texture, 
so to speak, of society, and may be attributed partly to the increased 



CHAP. XIII.] THE ESSAYISTS : STEELE, ADDISON. 



239 



influence of the popular element in our political constitution, and 
in some degree doubtless to that roughness and ferocity of man- 
ners which a long-continued period of warfare seldom fails to com- 
municate to a nation, and of which we have a signal example in 
more recent times in the coarse and violent tone of manners intro- 
duced in France by the military spirit of the Republic, the Con- 
sulate, and the Empire. G-ambling was exceedingly prevalent ; and 
drunkenness — so long, alas ! the vice of Englishmen — was grossly 
and universally habitual. Swearing and gross indecency of lan- 
guage were universally indulged in. The amusements of all classes 
possessed the coarseness of those athletic pastimes of which English- 
men have in all ages been so fond, but in many cases without 
either the courage which they inspire, or the generous and manly 
spirit which they cherish. The barbarous and brutalizing sports of 
the cock-pit and the bull-ring were still pursued with at least as 
much passion as the nobler amusements of the turf, the river, and 
the field. As to the pleasures of the intellect and the taste, they 
were either absolutely unknown, or confined to a few, and those few 
regarded as pedants or as humorists. "That general knowledge 
which now circulates in common talk," says Johnson, speaking of 
this period, "was then rarely to be found. Men not professing 
learning were not ashamed of ignorance ; and in the female world 
any acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured." 
To combat the national taste for these low and sordid follies, to 
infuse a more courteous, refined, and Christian tone into the manners 
of society, was the aim of a number of excellent writers, extending 
over a considerable period of our literary history, and known under 
the general appellation of " Essayists." Their aim being so com- 
prehensive, the subjects they had to treat so multifarious, and the 
public they had to address so numerous, they adopted the expedient 
of throwing their remarks upon any subject into the form of a 
paper, publishing at a very cheap rate, and at regular and very short 
intervals. The originator of this species of work was Sir Richard 
Steele, a man admirably qualified by vivacity and readiness of in- 
tellect, a profound acquaintance with life in all its phases, and an 
undeniable goodness of heart and of intention, to undertake the 
office of a periodical censor of manners; but his reputation as a 
writer was soon surpassed by many succeeding authors of the same 
kind, and particularly by his fellow-labourer and friend Addison. 

This latter person was long considered as a sort of standard or 
model of all that is most easy, elegant, and natural in English prose 
— a throne of supremacy from which he has only recently been 
ejected by the more weighty, more highly-coloured, more thoughtful 
and profound style of modern times, particularly since the French 
Revolution. His career was singularly prosperous. He was born 
in 1672, the son of a country gentleman of very moderate fortune, 



240 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIII. 



received at Oxford a good and learned education, and distinguished 
himself rather for the elegance than the depth of his scholarship. 
His first appearance in English literature was a poetical panegyric 
on Drydeu, written at twenty-two, and in which he exhibits much 
more neatness of versification than originality of thought or justness 
of criticism. He also translated the Fourth Georgic of Virgil, which 
Dryden printed in his own Miscellanies with warm encomiums on 
the young poet. But the work which must be considered his first 
earnest of success, and which first procured him the entrance to the 
arena of his after political success, was his poem on the King, 
addressed to Lord Somers, then keeper of the seals. This procured 
him the warm and lasting favour and patronage of the powerful 
lawyer, who soon after gave Addison solid proofs of his protection 
in procuring him a pension of 300Z. a-year, which enabled him to 
travel over the most interesting parts of France and Italy. 
' The death of King William deprived Addison of his pension, but 
he soon after more than compensated for this loss by the publication 
of his poem on the battle of Blenheim, which was rewarded by the 
place of Commissioner of Appeals. The poem is little better than a 
rhymed gazette, and strongly reminds the reader of the once equally 
celebrated but now equally unread poem of Boileau, on the passage 
of the Rhine by Louis XIY. There is in both works the same 
incessant and inefi'ectual struggle to appear splendid and animated, 
but the same stiffness, artifice, and efi'ort. The famous comparison 
of Marlborough to a destroying angel was as much admired in its 
day as the often-quoted 

"II se plaint de sa gloire qui I'attache au rivage " 

of the courtly and witty Despreaux. 

Addison now rapidly and steadily advanced along the path of 
political distinction : he was made Under-Secretary of State, and 
accompanied Wharton to Ireland. In 1716 he married the Dowager 
Countess of Warwick, to whose son he had formerly been tutor ; but 
this union, as might have been expected, was an unhappy one — as 
sach ill-assorted matches between hereditary nobility and intellectual 
celebrity are generally found to be. Addison was appointed, in 1717, 
Secretary of State, an office for which his fastidious delicacy of taste, 
timid character, and total want both of business talents and parlia- 
mentary eloquence, rendered him by all accounts singularly unfit. 
He soon resigned a dignity for which he was so unfitted by nature, 
and was rewarded for his services with a pension of 1500Z. a-year. 
He died on the 17th of June, 1719, leaving behind him a most 
enviable reputation for purity and integrity of life. After making 
due allowances for the tone of exaggeration and panegyric in which 
his biography has been written, it is impossible not to allow him high 
praise for personal virtue and piety. It would be too much to expect 



CHAP. XIII.] 



TRAGEDY OF CATO. 



241 



that any man — particularly one who was at the same time a literary 
man and a politician — should be perfect ; and when we reflect how 
much a ministerial life tends to sour the temper and inflame envy 
and suspicion, we cannot be surprised that Addison, in spite of a 
character naturally amiable and benevolent, should have sometimes 
exhibited a little querulousness and impatience. As an author it is 
not so easy to draw his character, though its principal outlines will 
nearly coincide with those of his political portrait. We shall find the 
same timid propriety, the same universal and unquestionable good- 
ness of aim and intention, with perhaps a little shade of the subdued 
jealousy of other men's glory which drew from Pope those far-famed 
and admirable lines — 

"were there one whose fires 
True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires ; 
Bless'd with each talent and each art to please, 
And born to write, converse, and live with ease ; 
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, 
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne; 
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, 
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise; 
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer. 
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; 
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, 
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; 
Alike reserved to blame, and to commend, 
A timorous foe, or a suspicious friend ; 
Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged, 
And so obliging, that he ne'er obliged; 
Like Cato, gives his little senate laws, 
And sits attentive to his own applause ; 
While wits and Templars every sentence raise, 
And wonder with a foolish face of praise ; — 
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be? 
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he ? " 

Before we speak of that portion of Addison's writings upon which 
is chiefly based his enduring reputation as a classical English prose 
writer, it would be unjust not to speak of one or two of his princi- 
pal productions, by which he attained in his ov/n day the summit of 
popularity, though they are now comparatively neglected. The chief 
of these is, undoubtedly, the tragedy of ' Cato.' ' Cato ' is a work 
constructed according to the very strictest rules of the so-called 
classical propriety. The three unities are exactly and laboriously 
preserved, the action simple and elevated, the personages few in 
number, the sentiments and language throughout studiously elevated 
and imposing. It is, in short, a carefully-carved mask of the neatest 
workmanship ; but the reader at every moment exclaims, with the 
fox in the fable, " What a pity it hath no brains ! '' To preserve 
the vaunted unity of time and place (which, when preserved, is good 
for nothing), the author sacrifices probability — not only real, but 
dramatic — in the most extraordinary manner; making conspirators 
plot against Cato in Cato's own house ; making the hero himself 



242 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIII. 



commit suicide in an open hall, public to all the world; representing 
a project made to carry off a lady by means of the disguise not only 
of her lover but of all her lover^s body-guards ; and a thousand other 
such absurdities. For the characters and manners, they are worthy 
of the plot : they are neither Romans nor Numidians, neither patriots 
nor conspirators, because they are not human beings. " The virtuous 
Marcia towers above her sex^' indeed, but it is in frigid pedantry of 
ambitious declamation ; the patriotic harangues of Cato are sickly 
commonplaces, fagoted together out of history ; and the celebrated 
soliloquy of the hero, when he meditates suicide, though certainly 
not devoid of merit, yet is only valuable as a purely didactic passage. 
Shakspeare, Jonson, Massinger, Beaumont — these have shown us 
Koman passions, Roman patriotism, and Roman language ; these 
frigid abstractions bear the same relation to the Romans of Shak- 
speare, or the Romans of Rome, as the waxen dolls in the window of 
a barber to the living, moving, thinking, passengers that walk by 
them in the street. 

But it is as a periodical essayist that Addison earned his true 
glory. On the 12th of April, 1709, Steele commenced the publi- 
cation of a small sheet, issued thrice a-week, at a very low price 
(each number cost a penny), containing a short essay or disquisition 
upon some topic connected with the dress, behaviour, morality, 
amusements, &c., of the upper and middle classes of society. The 
remaining portion of the half-sheet was devoted to news and general 
information. This kind of semi-didactic newspaper was chiefly 
written by its first projector, Steele, under the pseudonym of Isaac 
Bickerstaff, and was entitled The Tatler.^ The essays, which 
formed its prominent feature, were distinguished for that ease, 
unafi"ected good-nature, and fluent, though not always very correct, 
style which characterised the amiable author; and the work met 
with so much success that no morning tea-table was without this 
indispensable accompaniment. 'The Tatler' continued its career 
till it amounted to 271 numbers, when it was transformed or re- 
modelled into a nearly similar publication, still more famous in 
English literature, under the name of 'The Spectator.' In the 
composition of 'The Tatler,' Steele had received the occasional 
assistance of Addison ; but in its successor the latter took a much 
more active part, contributing all the papers marked with any one 
of the letters composing the word Clio. 'The Spectator' began on 
March 1st, 1713, and, appearing daily, instead of thrice a-week, as 
'The Tatler' had done, extended to 635 numbers, each of which 
contains a complete essay, generally upon some subject of moral 
importance, and occasionally a disquisition on the principles of cri- 
ticism, and the application of those principles in judging of some 
great work of literature or art. The object of these elegant publi- 
cations was in the highest degree laudable and excellent. " I shall 



CHAP. XTII.] 



THE SPECTATOR. 



243 



endeavour/' says Steele himself, "to enliven morality witli wit, and 
to temper wit with morality, that my readers may, if possible, both 
ways find their account in the speculation of the day. It was said 
of Socrates, that he brought philosophy down from heaven to inhabit 
among men. I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I 
have brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and 
colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables, and in coffee- 
houses." Accustomed as we now are to a much more refined and 
intellectual tone of social intercourse, and to the diffusion, even to 
the lower order of people, of a degree of general knowledge and 
information which was then extremely rare even in the highest, we 
may smile at the somewhat trite and commonplace tone of many of 
these essays, at the slender parade of scholarship, the little scrap of 
Latin or Grreek prefixed to them as a motto — a sentence of Tully, 
or a precept of Seneca or Longinus; but we were unjust to forget 
the excellent morality, the useful and reasonable principles of good- 
breeding, the Christian and gentle spirit which they inculcate ; and 
we must remember too, that, however narrow, and prejudiced, and 
exclusive may seem to us the dogmas of Addison's literary criti- 
cisms, yet that these were the first popular essays in English towards 
the investigation of the grounds and axioms of assthetic science, 
and that even here, in innumerable instances (as, for example, in 
the celebrated reviews of 'Paradise Lost,' and of the old national 
ballad of ' Chevy Chase'), we find the author's natural and delicate 
sense of the beautiful and sublime triumphing over the accumulated 
errors and false judgment of his own artificial age, and the author 
of ' Cato ' doing unconscious homage to the nature and pathos of 
the rude old Border ballad-maker. 

But the most delightful portions of ^The Spectator' are those in 
which the "short-faced gentleman," the supposed author, speaks of 
the imaginary club of which he is a member. The army is repre- 
sented by Captain Sentry ; the fashionable world by an old beau, 
Will Honeycomb ; the city and men of business express their opinions 
through the mouth of Sir Andrew Freeport; and the country gentle- 
men are represented by Sir Roger de Coverley. These personages 
have very little life, humour, or individuality, with the exception of 
the last, which is one of the most exquisite embodiments of nature 
which the pencil of fiction has ever drawn. The mixture, in this 
enchanting portrait, of benevolence, old-fashioned politeness, simplici- 
ty, superstition, charity, and a taste for rural sports, is sketched with 
a light and delicate, yet firm and skilful hand, which makes the 
picture — though so different in style — well worthy to hang in the 
same gallery with Lou Quixote or with Parson Adams, with the 
Lismahago of Smollett or the Mr. Shandy of Sterne. The first idea 
of this sketch, it is most probable, was suggested, and the outline 
perhaps roughly drawn in, by Steele. Be this as it may, whether 
20* 



214 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CIIAP. XIIT. 



first suggested by Steele, and afterwards elaborated by Addison, or 
one of those happy conceptions which men owe sometimes to accident 
fully as much as to inspiration, Sir Hoger de Coverley is uniformly 
and unfailingly the delight of every reader — 

"A beautiful thought, and softly shadovv'd forth ;" 

and Addison, not unconscious of the beauty of his work, seems to 
have taken an inexhaustible delight in placing it in new points of 
view, and drawing forth, with the gentle and quiet touch of humour 
and genius, all its innocent and attaching oddities. He gives us 
Sir Roger during his visit to London ; he accompanies him (in an 
enchanting passage) to Westminister Abbey; he carries us to the 
country to visit him in his old pinnacled and mullioned hall, deeply 
embosomed in ancestral trees ; he shows us the good knight in his 
moments of tender pensiveness, or gaily chatting with his ingenious 
kinsman. Will Wimble, or mildly testifying against the witchcraft 
of Moll White, the village sorceress. When Sir Roger dies (for 
Addison is reported to have killed him, as Cervantes did bis admirable 
knight, in order to prevent any grosser hand from continuing, and 
perhaps spoiling, his creation), we feel as if we had lost a friend. 

" Whoever wishes,'' says Johnson, " to attain an English style, 
familiar but not coarse, elegant but not ostentatious, must give his 
days and nights to the study of Addison." We cannot conclude 
our notice of this excellent writer and estimable man more appropri- 
ately than by adopting the words of Chambers, which are warm, 
just, and comprehensive ^ In Addison the reader v/ill find a rich 
but chaste vein of humour and satire ; lessons of morality and 
religion, divested of all austerity and gloom ; criticism at once pleas- 
ing and profound ; and pictures of national character and manners 
that must ever charm from their vivacity and truth. Greater energy 
of character, or a more determined hatred of vice and tyranny, 
would have curtailed his usefulness as a public censor. He led the 
nation insensibly to a love of virtue and constitutional freedom, to a 
purer taste in morals and literature, and to the importance of those 
everlasting truths which so warmly engaged his heart and imagina- 
tion.'' 

But to us, whose eyes have been scaled and purged by the all- 
curing power of time, the greatest figure in this period of English 
literary history is undoubtedly Samuel Johnson. As a writer, he is 
the very incarnation of good sense ; and as a man, he was an example 
of so high a degree of virtue, magnanimity, and self-sacrifice, that 
he has been justly placed by a profound modern speculator among 
the heroes of his country's annals. 

He was the son of a poor provincial bookseller, and was born at 
Lichfield, September ISth, 1709; afifording another testimony of 
that truth so often exemplified in the history of literature, and so 



CHAP. XIII.] SAMUEL JOHNSON I HIS CAr.EER. 



245 



pithily expressed by an old writer, " that no great work, or worthy of 
praise and memory, but came out of poor cradles." He was afflicted, 
even from his earliest years, with a scrofulous disorder, which dis- 
figured a person naturally awkward and ungainly, and this disorder 
was probably connected with another and more terrible one, which 
renders it still more wonderful how he could have ever attained to 
such a degree of just reputation as he afterwards earned. This was 
a constitutional tendency to melancholy and hypochondria — a vile 
melancholy," to use his own touching words, which has kept me 
mad half my life, or at least not sober." What a contrast to the 
fantastical and intentional gloom of Young, springing from the 
ignoble source of disappointed ambition, and indulged as the best 
key in which he could set his ingenious lamentations over the vanity 
of human things, his sombre conceits, as sadly fantastic as the 
glittering ornaments on a rich man's coffin ! What a contrast to the 
cynical asperity of Swift, masking a haughty, selfish, and arrogant 
pride under an afiected contempt of human nature, complaining, 
though at the pinnacle of fame, of neglect and unrewarded exertions ! 
The earlier part — nay, by far the greater portion — of Johnson's 
career was passed in obscure and apparently hopeless struggles with 
want and indigence ; and however these may have enlarged his 
knowledge of human life, or fortified his own powers of industry and 
reflection, they only place in a higher elevation the virtue of the 
man and the intellectual vigour of the great scholar. He passed 
some time at Pembroke College, Oxford, but his father's misfortunes 
compelled him to leave the university without a degree. To the 
aspirant after literary fame, to him who takes a wise pleasure in 
tracing the struggles of genius to emerge from a sea of difficulties, 
few things are more delightful or more salutary than to follow step 
by step the commencement of Johnson's career : 

"Slow rises worth by poverty oppressed." 

We find him acting as usher in schools, and afterwards unsuccess- 
fully attempting to conduct a school himself at the little town of 
Market Bosworth. Poor, independent, ambitious, conscious of his 
own powers, he now adopted the desperate yet natural resolution of 
launching on the broad ocean of London society, and he travelled up 
to the capital in company with his friend and former pupil, David 
Grarrick, who was afterwards destined to obtain, on the stage, a repu- 
tation as great as that ultimately acquired in literature by his 
companion. Johnson now commenced the profession (or rather 
trade, for at that time it was, alas ! hardly more dignified, and 
certainly not so well remunerated as many mechanical occupations) 
of author, obtaining a scanty and precarious subsistence by translating 
and writing task-work for the booksellers, and principally employed as 
a contributor to the ' Gentleman's Magazine,^ then published by Cave. 



246 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIII. 



Jolinson's style during the whole of his career was exceedingly 
peculiar and characteristic both in its beauties and defects, and when 
he arrived at eminence may be said to have produced a revolution in 
the manner of writing in English ; and as this revolution has to a 
certain degree lasted till the present day, it will be well to say a few 
words on the subject. It is in the highest degree pompous, sonorous, 
and, to use a happy expression of Coleridge, hyper-latinistic ; run- 
ning into perpetual antithesis, and balancing period against period 
with an almost rhythmical regularity, which at once fills and fatigues 
the ear. Formed upon certain of our elder writers (as Sir Thomas 
]3rowne, for instance), whose learning and grave eloquence cannot 
always save them from the charge of pedantry, it was a style, like 
theirs, exactly such as might have been expected from a man who 
had educated himself in solitary study, and whose memory was filled 
with echoes of the rhetorical sententiousness of Juvenal and Seneca, 
and the artful and ambitious periods of Sallust or Tacitus. The great 
deficiency of the style is want — not of ease, as has been unjustly 
supposed, for Johnson's strong and nervous intellect wielded its 
polished and ponderous weapon with perfect mastery and freedom — 
but of that familiar flexibility which is best adapted to the general 
course of disquisition. It would be unjust to Johnson's good taste 
not to remark that he appears to have been sensible of the imperfec- 
tion of his way of writing; for his later works exhibit a marked and 
progressive diminution of this stiffness and Latinism ; and we may 
also observe that many of the words (generally Latin, as " resusci- 
tate," "fatuity," "germination," &c.)j his use of which excited so 
much criticism at fhe time, have since been completely naturalized 
and endenizened in the language. The prevailing defect of Johnson's 
style is uniformity : the combinations of his kaleidoscope are soon 
exhausted; his peal of bells is very limited in its changes ; and as 
there is necessarily, in so artificial a style, an air of pretension and 
ambitiousness, the sameness is more fatiguing than would be the 
snipped periods and tuneless meanness of a more unostentatious mode 
of expression. 

In 1788 appeared the admirable satire entitled ^London/ a revival 
of the Thirteenth Satire of Juvenal, in which the topics of the 
Roman poet are applied with surprising freedom, animation, and 
felicity to English manners, and the corruptions of modern London 
society. 

After the satire of ' London,' of which we shall speak more anon, 
Johnson published his ' Life of Savage,' the biography of a poet 
Avhose strange and melancholy story formed an admirable subject for 
Johnson's dignified and moral pen; and in 1749 appeared the 
pendant or companion-picture to the 'London/ in a similar .modern- 
isation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. Our readers may not perhaps 
know that tlie Thirteenth Satire of Juvenal is directed against the 



CHAP. XIII.] 



JOHNSON: SATIRES. 



247 



corruptions of society in Eome, against the miseries and humiliations 
which a residence in the great city imposes upon a poor but virtuous 
man, and the immense riches and influence obtained, by the most 
unworthy arts, by Greeks and favourite freed men. The picture is a 
striking and impressive one, and has lost none of its grandeur in the 
hands of the English copyist, who has with consummate skill trans- 
ferred the invectives of J uvenal to the passion for imitating French 
fashions, and adapted the images of Juvenal to London vices, dis- 
comforts, and corruptions. In the Tenth Satire (perhaps the grandest 
specimen which we possess of this kind of writing) the Roman 
takes a higher ground, and in an uninterrupted torrent of noble 
and melancholy eloquence has pointed out the folly and emptiness 
of all those objects which form the chief aim of human desires. 
He shows us successively the misery which has accompanied, and 
the ruin which has followed, the possession of those advantages for 
which men sigh and pray: he exhibits the vanity of riches, ambition, 
eloquence, military glory, long life, and beauty, the whole exemplified 
by the most signal examples, drawn from history, of the folly of 
human hopes, — 

"Magnaque numinibus Diis exaudita malignis." 
Many passages of J ohnson's satires must be regarded as translations — 
consummate translations — of the words of Juvenal ; but he frequently 
changes, augments, and strengthens as, for example, Juvenal has 
instanced Sejanus as a proof of the instability of political power and 
the favour of the great; Johnson has added to this impressive picture 
the fall of Wolsey. Hannibal and Alexander — whose death forms 
so instructive a moral of the folly of the conqueror and general — • 
are not excluded, but the equally warning story of Charles XH. is 
made the vehicle for a moral lesson not less admirably expressed, and 
even more impressive, from its nearness of time, to a modern reader. 
The lofty philosophical tone of gloomy eloquence, perhaps, is even 
more uniformly sustained in the English than in the Koman poet; 
and in the conclusion of the satire, where, after showing the nothing- 
ness of all earthly hopes, the voice of reason points out what are the 
only objects worthy of the wise man's desire — health, innocence, 
resignation, and tranquillity — the English poet must be allowed to 
have surpassed in pathetic solemnity even the grandeur of his model, 
as far as the consolatory truths of Christian revelation are sublimer 
than the imperfect lights of Stoic paganism. 

Between the years 1750 and 1752 Johnson was occupied in the 
composition of a journal, or series of periodical essays, entitled 
' The Rambler,^ founded upon the model of the ' Spectators' and 
' Tatlers' which Addison and Steele had employed so usefully as a 
vehicle of moral improvement. But in Johnson's hands this kind 
of writing was neither so popular nor so delightful as it had been in 
those of the easy and elegant essayists whom we have just mentioned. 



248 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [OHAP. XIII. 



Knowledge, good sense, sincerity, lie possessed at least in as high a 
degree as his predecessors, but the reader observes a lack of ease, a 
want of light and shade, for which not all the imposing qualities of 
Johnson's mind can compensate : the style is too uniformly didactic, 
cathedral, and declamatory ; he has no sliift of words, and will describe 
the frivolity of a coxcomb with the same rolling periods and solemn 
gravity of antithesis as would be appropriate enough in an invective 
against tyranny or fanaticism. But the ^Ramblers' are full of 
weighty and solid sense, and if less amusing, they are certainly 
neither less useful nor less instructive. Addison and Steele talk, 
Johnson declaims : the former address you like virtuous, learned, 
and well-bred men of the world, whose scholastic acquirements have 
been harmonised and digested by long intercourse with polished 
society; Johnson rather like a university professor, who retains, in 
the world, something of the stiffness of the chair. The above 
remarks will apply no less to the ' Idler,' another publication on a 
similar plan, which continued to appear between 1758 and 1760. 

In the interval which occurred between the discontinuance of the 
former and the commencement of the last-mentioned periodical, 
appeared the celebrated 'Dictionary of the English Language,' on 
which Johnson had been laboriously engaged during a period of about 
seven years. This work is a glorious monument of learning, energy, 
and perseverance ; and, when viewed as the production of a single 
unaided scholar, is perhaps one of the most signal triumphs of lite- 
rary activity. If we compare with Johnson's Dictionary the great 
national work of the French Academy, we shall find abundant reason 
to admire the astonishing courage and diligence of our countryman, 
who alone, unsupported, in the midst of other and pressing occupa- 
tions, found means to produce, in seven years, a dictionary certainly 
not inferior to what was considered as a great national monument, 
which was produced by the united labour of a royally-endowed and 
numerous corporation, and which occupied an infinitely longer time 
in the preparation. We must not forget, either, the immense differ- 
ence between the two languages in point of richness and copiousness, 
which renders the task of an English lexicographer immeasurably 
more onerous. Both Johnson's work and the * Dictionnaire de 
I'Academie' are remarkable for the neatness and acuteness of inter- 
pretation of words ; both give examples of the various meanings from 
good authors; and in this last respect we conceive that Johnson's 
work is markedly superior; for the Academie contents itself with 
any quotation which exhibits with sufficient clearness the particular 
use of the word in question, but beyond this has no specific value, 
and often no meaning or interest whatever. The quotations employed 
by Johnson, on the other hand, to illustrate and exemplify the dilfer- 
ent significations of words, are not only taken from a vast collection 
of works of classical authority, but themselves contain something 



CHAP. XIII.] RASSELAS — LIVES OF THE POETS. 



249 



complete and interesting in itself — either a beautiful passage of 
poetry, a pithy remark, a historical fact, or a scientific definition. 
The principal defect of this excellent dictionary is the etymological 
part. When Johnson wrote, the German literature could hardly be 
said to be in existence, and the northern languages were consequently 
not studied : the investigator was deprived almost completely of the 
immense light thrown upon the history of our language by those 
dialects which form the source of so important a portion of it. 

In 1759 appeared the famous oriental tale entitled ' Rasselas,' a 
work of no great length, but exhibiting all the peculiarities of John- 
son's manner. As a representation of Eastern society, or indeed as 
a picture of society in any sense, it has no claim to our admiration ; 
there is no interest in the plot, if, indeed, it can be said to have a 
plot — there is hardly any attempt at the delineation of character ; 
but if read as a fine succession of moral remarks, breathing a some- 
what desponding tone of feeling, and conveyed in his characteristic 
pomp of measured declamation — it merits more than one perusal. 
Compared with the descriptions of Oriental manners, which more 
recent times have given us — ' Kasselas ' will seem stiff, vague, and 
unnatural. The Happy Valley of the Abyssinian prince is as nothing 
when compared with the Hall of Eblis in the wonderful tale of 
' Vathek j' but we repeat, that Johnson's production is not to be read 
as a novel, but as a series of moral essays on a vast multiplicity of 
subjects, full of sense, acuteness, and originality of thought. 

The last work which we shall mention is ' The Lives of the Poets,' 
originally composed at the instance of a bookseller, in order to be 
prefixed to a collection of specimens of this branch of English litera- 
ture. The plan of this work was very limited, perhaps unavoidably 
so, excluding nearly all of the very greatest names in our literature, 
and embracing for the most part only what must be considered as by 
no means the most brilliant period of the English Muse, i. e. from 
Cowley to Johnson's own time. With the exception of Milton, 
all the poets whose biographies he has written belong to that 
school which we have described as having grown up mainly under 
Latin, French, and Italian influence — in short, the classicists — in 
whose works the intellect is the predominant power. In judging of 
this species of poetry, Johnson has shown a might, mastery, and 
solidity of criticism, perhaps unequalled by any other author; but 
the moment he enters the enchanted ground of what is called 
romantic poetry, he exhibits a singular and total want of perception. 
Indeed, his mind, admirably adapted as it was for the scientific part 
of criticism, was impotent to feel or appreciate what is picturesque 
or passionate. He is like a deaf man seated at a symphony of 
Beethoven — a sense is wanting to him. How accurately and acutely 
has he characterised Cowley, Dryden, Pope, and Otway ! How justly 
has he appreciated the more intellectual qualities of Milton ! But 



250 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XITI. 



when he ridicules the ^ Lycidas/ or complains of the hlank verse of 
' Paradise Lost/ — when he charges the lyrics of Gray with absurdity 
and extravagance, who does not see that Nature, so liberal to him in 
some respects, had denied to his powerful mind the least sensibility 
for what is beautiful and enchanting in the airy world of fancy ? 
^The Lives of the Poets/ when read, with due allowance, will 
undoubtedly remain a classical work in England. We shall not 
easily find so vast an accumulation of ingenious, solid, and acute 
observation, so rich a treasury of noble moral lessons, or so fine and 
manly a tone of writing and thinking, as this excellent volume con- 
tains. Let us enjoy what it possesses and can give, without mur- 
muring at what it has not. 

Besides the above works, Johnson composed an immense number 
of detached pieces of criticism, and distinguished himself as a political 
writer. Many of his pamphlets (which were always in support of 
extreme Tory or monarchial opinions) obtained great celebrity at the 
time. In 1762 he received the gift of a pension of 300/. a-year — a 
jast though inadequate reward for the utility of his numerous 
writings, and his unflinching devotion to the cause of virtue, religion, 
and morality. He also published an edition of Shakspeare, not very 
valuable in a philological point of view, from his imperfect acquaint- 
ance and sympathy with our older and more romantic literature, but 
useful as embodying a large mass of notes and illustrations of disputed 
and obscure passages. The character of Shakspeare's genius, given 
in the preface, is a noble specimen of panegyric ; and it is singular 
to see how far the divine genius of the dramatist almost succeeds in 
overcoming all the prejudices of Johnson's age and education. As 
a moralist, as a painter of men and minds, Johnson has done Shaks- 
peare (at least. as far as any man could) ample justice; but in his 
judgment of the great creative poet's more romantic manifestations 
he exhibits a callousness and insensibility which was partly the result 
of his education and of the age when he lived, and partly, without 
doubt, the consequence of the peculiar constitution of his mind — a 
mind which felt much more sympathy with men than with things, 
and was much more at home in the "full tide of London existence" 
than in the airy world of imagination — among the every-day crowds 
of Fleet Street, than in Prospero's enchanted isle, or the moonlit 
terraces of Verona. It was this positivism of mind (to borrow a 
most expressive French word) that gave him such an extraordinary 
and well-deserved supremacy as a conversationist ; and it was this 
mixture of learning, benevolence, wit, virtue, and good sense that 
makes the admirable portrait of him, Daguerreotyped in the memoirs 
of his friend and disciple Boswell, the most interesting and living 
portrait which literature exhibits of a great and good man — the 
perfect embodiment of the ideal of the English character, with all its 
honesty, goodness, and nobility, rather individualised than disfigured 
by the few and venial foibles and oddities which alloy its sterling gold. 



CHAP. XIY.] HISTORY OF PROSE FICTION. 



251 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE GREAT NOVELISTS. 

History of Prose Fiction — in Spain, Italy, and France — The Romance and 
the iS"ovel — Defoe — Robinson Crusoe — Source of its Charm — Defoe's Air 
of Reality — Minor Works — Richardson — Pamela — Clarissa Harlow^e — 
Female Characters — Sir Charles Grandison — Fielding — Joseph Andrews 
— Jonathan Vv^ild — Tom Jones — Amelia — Smollett — Roderic Random — Sea 
Characters — Peregrine Pickle — Count Fathom — Humphry Clinker — Sterne 

— Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Joarney — Goldsmith — Chinese 
Letters — Traveller and Deserted Village — Vicar of Wakeiield — Comedies 

— Histories. 

"We are now arrived at that point in the history of British litera- 
ture where, in obedience to the ever-acting laws which regulate intel- 
lectual as they do physical development, a new species of composition 
was to originate. As in the material creation we find the several 
manifestations of productive energy following a progressive order, 
— the lower, humbler, and less organised existences appearing first, 
and successively making way for kinds more variously and bounte- 
ously endowed, the less perfect merging imperceptibly into the more 
perfect, — so can we trace a similar action of this law in the gradual 
development of man's intellectual operations. No sooner do certain 
favourable conditions exist, no sooner has a fit nidus or theatre of 
action been produced, than we behold new manifestations of human 
intellect appearing in literature, in science, and in art, Tiith as much 
regularity as, in the primeval eras of the physical world, the animalcule 
gave way to the fish, the fish to the reptile, the reptile to the bird, 
the beast, and ultimately to man. 

Spain, France, and Italy had all possessed the germ or embryo of 
prose fiction before it can be said to appear as a substantive, inde- 
pendent, and influential species of literature in Great Britain ■ and 
in each of these countries it manifested itself under a difterent form, 
modified by the character of the respective peoples, the nature of 
their language, the character of those antecedent types of literature 
which gave birth to or suggested it, and the state cf society whose 
manners it reflected. In Spain, for example, arising among a 
romantic, religious, and chivalrous people, whose memory was full 
of the traditions of Moorish warfare, and possessing the acute, 
impressible, and yet profound intellect usually resulting from physical 
well-being, a considerable degree of political freedom, and a deli- 
cious climate, we find it taking the form of the romance, full of 
adventure, and with a splendid prodigality of incident; showing 



252 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIV. 



traces of its mixed origin in the European delicacy of its humour 
and exquisite sense of the ludicrous, and retaining with the numer- 
ous episodes (one inserted within the other, as in the ' Thousand and 
One Nights') much of the peculiar Oriental structure, together with 
the Oriental richness of imagination, and Oriental profusion and 
laxity of style. Here we have the union of the Castilian hidalgo 
and the Abencerrage, the Groth and the Moor, the lofty sierra and 
the smooth and luxuriant vega. In Italy, again — the Italy of the 
fifteenth century — we find a people highly civilised, elegant, commer- 
cial, exquisitely sensitive to comic ideas, penetrating, questioning 
everything, applying to their government and their religion the 
dangerous test of ridicule, yet at the same time in the highest degree 
sensuous, with a wonderful and petulant mobility of imagination — 
at once childishly superstitious and audaciously sceptical. Among 
them arises Boccaccio, immortalising himself by a collection of tales, 
short and pointed — alternately drawing the deepest tears and moving 
the broadest laughter — full at once of the grossest indecency and the 
highest refinements of romantic purity. 

In France, again, we find first the lofty chivalric romance — inter- 
minable in length, unnatural and exaggerated in sentimente, but 
bearing a general impress of dignity and magnificence — which cannot 
but be held as of Spanish origin. Of this the works of Scuderi 
and D'Urfe are memorable examples. Secondly, we find another 
variety, no less imitated from the Spanish, in which the meanest 
persons of ordinary life are put in motion and pass through a long 
series of amusing though often rather discreditable adventures, hav- 
ing no involution of intrigue, and connected together only by the 
slender thread of their being supposed to happen to one person. In 
this species of fiction (founded upon works which the Spaniards call 
stories " de vida picaresca — of ragamuffin life — from the general 
character of the persons and adventures) the French have surpassed 
their masters ; for much as a careful comparison with the Spanish 
originals will induce us to detract from Le Sage's originality^ it will 
be more than compensated by his genius, when we reflect how far 
that admirable writer is superior to Quevedo, Mendoza, and Aleman, 
and others from whom he so freely borrowed. 

From the above remarks it results that we can establish two 
important and distinct forms of prose fiction, — the one treating of 
elevated persons, either imaginary or historical, and delineating 
serious or important events ; the other dealing with men and actions 
of a more ludicrous, mean, or everyday character — the romance, in 
short, or the novel. The former species derives its name from the 
long narratives which form the bulk of Middle-Age poetry, which 
were generally written in the Romanz dialect; the other from the 
short prose tales so popular in Italy and France at the revival of 
letters. It is obvious that both these designations have almost com- 



CHAP. XIV.] 



PROSE FICTION. 



253 



pletely lost their original signification. In England, the romance, 
besides the qualities just assigned, is generally the vehicle of a more 
artfully constructed and regular plot; while the novel by no means 
implies a shorter work, though one of a less grave and ambitious 
character. In a word, though this distinction may be taken as a 
general guide to the student, and will aid him perceptibly in classing 
these works of fiction, he must by no means take it in too rigid and 
invariable an acceptation ; or rather, he must not be surprised to find 
works partake of both characters. 

But, in the department of prose fiction, we hope to be able to 
establish for the English literature a claim to a degree of originality 
(originality of the highest order, which is exhibited in the separate 
creation of a distinct type) not inferior to that which our country 
incontestably exhibited in many other departments of intellectual 
development — in the romantic drama, for instance. The father of 
our romance and novel was Daniel Defoe, the son of a London 
butcher, born in 1661, and educated with considerable care for the 
profession of a Presbyterian pastor, but which he renounced for 
trade, having during a long and eventful life unsuccessfully engaged 
in a great variety of commercial occupations — at one time a hosier, 
at another a tilemaker, and ultimately a dealer in wool. His real 
vocation, however, was that of a writer, for he produced an enor- 
mous mass of compositions, general pamphlets, either on temporary 
and local subjects of political interest, or narratives adapted to suit 
the passing taste of the day — in fact, what would be styled by a 
French critic brochures de circonstance." In 1699 he published 
his ' True-born Englishman,' a vigorous poetical efi'usion, written in 
singularly rough and tuneless rhymes, containing a powerful defence 
of William of Orange and the Dutch nation; and in 1702 appeared 
his celebrated pamphlet, ^ The Shortest Way with the Dissenters,' 
an inimitable piece of sarcastic irony, in which, to exhibit in a hateful 
light the unjust and unconstitutional persecution of the dissenting 
sects, he puts on the mask of an adherent of government, and gravely 
advises parliament to make a law punishing with death any minister 
convicted of exercising an unorthodox worship. The government, 
infuriated by the bitter satire, prosecuted the author of the pamphlet, 
and the uncompromising writer was punished by fine, imprisonment, 
exposure in the pillory, and the loss of his ears. This suggested to 
Defoe the strong and excellent poem called ' Hymn to the Pillory,' 
a powerful expression of the feelings of outraged liberty and patriot- 
ism. During a two years' confinement in Newgate, our indefatigable 
writer conducted a periodical publication entitled ^ The Review,' in 
which he boldly attacks the arbitrary and oppressive conduct of 
government, and gallantly pleads the cause of liberty and the consti- 
tution. That Defoe must have had a high reputation for honesty 
and ability is established by the fact that he was afterwards com- 



254 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIV. 



missioned by Queen Anne's government to go to Scotland, in order 
to influence the Union between that country and England ; and he 
appears to have acquitted himself in this delicate mission with 
remarkable skill, zeal, and dexterity. Of this event he afterwards 
■wrote a history. Continuing his course as a pamphlet-writer, we 
cannot be surprised to find him, after this temporary blink of sun- 
shine in his fortunes, again imprisoned and fined 800Z. This con- 
finement, however, did not last so long as the former, for he was 
liberated after two months ; and he now appears, either disgusted 
with the dangerous and ill-requited profession of a political writer, 
or more probably anxious for the welfare of his own family, to have 
directed his great powers to a different line of literary exertion — one 
in which he could encounter no such persecution as had so frequently 
overwhelmed him, and in which present advantage and popularity 
were more likely to be attained. 

In 1719 appeared the first part of 'Robinson Crusoe,^ one of 
the most truly genial, perfect and original fictions that the world has 
ever seen. It may be said that some of the high and peculiar merits 
of this tale have been the very cause of our not appreciating its 
extraordinary qualities as they deserve. It is almost universally put 
into the hands of the very young, and the avidity with which its 
pages are devoured by the childish reader, and the never-failing per- 
manency with which its principal scenes, events, and characters 
remain graven on the memory of all who have ever read it, prevent 
us from recurring to its perusal, and thus hinder us from applying to 
the fiction which enchanted our childhood the test of the more critical 
judgment of after life. Were such a test to be generally applied, 
and were we to examine into the means by which those intense 
impressions — among the intensest which the memory of childhood 
can recall — were produced, Defoe's name would be regarded with 
veneration, as that of him who gave our infant curiosity its healthiest 
and sweetest food, and our infant sensibilities their most legitimate 
and improving action. 

Attempts have been made to deprive Defoe of the glory of having 
invented the subject and outline of 'Robinson Crusoe;' and some 
have even suggested that the novelist merely expanded the narrative 
of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish seaman, left (as was a not uncom- 
mon punishment among the rude navigators of that time, technically 
called "marooning") by his shipmates upon the island of Juan 
Fernandez, where he passed a long series of years in a solitary exis- 
tence, somewhat resembling the supposed life of Crusoe. But apart 
from the circumstance that the leading idea of the work (a ship- 
wrecked solitary in an uninhabited island of the tropics) implies no 
very great stretch of invention, and that such an event is at all times 
exceedingly possible, and was then not unfrequent, Selkirk's narra- 
tive is extant, and; if compared to the fiction of Defoe, triumphantly 



CHAP. XIV.] 



DEFOE : ROBINSON CEUSOE. 



255 



disproves the accusation above stated, and shows us the immense 
difference between a meagre statement of bare facts and the powers 
of creative genius. Where shall we find in Selkirk's narrative (the 
most striking circumstances of which are the savage and almost 
bestial state to which the unfortunate solitary was reduced) the inex- 
haustible prodigality of contrivance by which Robinson alleviates 
his long reckjsion, his attempts at escape, his hopes, his terrors, his > 
sickness, his religious struggles, his sorrows, and his joys ? In Defoe 
we associate wim the persons, places, animals, and things of which 
he speaks a reality as absolute and intense — nay, often much more 
so — as we do with the true recollections of things and people which 
surrounded us in childhood. If we examine our own memory we 
shall find that the image of Crusoe, of Friday, of Friday's father, of 
the goats, the cats, the parrots, of the corn which Crusoe planted, 
of the canoe which he makes and then finds too heavy for him to 
launch, the cave in which he stows his gunpowder, the creek iu 
which he lands in his raft, and in general the whole topography of 
the island — we shall find, we repeat, that these images are as strong, 
as intense (as surely, therefore, as real) as our recollection of the 
playthings which we broke, the little plot of ground which we 
cultivated, the nurse who took care of us, or the woods in which we 
went a-nutting. What then is the artifice by which genius has worked 
— for even the divinity of genius must work by secondary means — 
to do this miracle ? We reply, the admirable causality of Defoe's 
mind, the courage with which he renounces the supernatural, the 
extraordinary — the intensity of good sense which fixed the work in 
a low hey, as it were, dealing with the most ordinary elements of 
human character and the most everyday operations of nature. He 
might have made Crusoe, instead of the plain work-day being that 
we behold him — the mate of a merchant-man, an ordinary man, 
neither wise, nor learned, nor ingenious, nor virtuous, beyond the 
great mass of human beings — he might have made him intrinsically 
(per se) more interesting ; but would he not have been relatively 
less so ? In like manner Defoe might have made his work a vehicle 
for much more extensive information in natural history, physics, 
astronomy, &c., than he has done ; but would it have been equally 
interesting ? This question has been settled by all the innumerable 
works which have been written on the model of Robinson Crusoe, 
with the laudable object of conveying elementary instruction to the 
young through the medium of fiction : as for example, the little book 
called ^ Le Robinson Suisse,' Marryat's ^ Masterman Ready,^ 'His- 
tory of Sir Edward Seaward,' &c. In all these, and they have all 
much merit, the author has injured the effect of his picture by 
crowding his canvas with figures, and represented his shipwrecked 
families as a great deal too ingenious and adroit, and their exertions 
as too uniformly successful. 
21* 



256 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIV. 



In the difficulties encountered by his hero, the author has 
frequently represented those as most harassing and as most difficult 
to be surmounted which at first thought we should be apt to consider 
as trifles : thus, for example, the repeated failures of Robinson to 
make an earthenware pot which would stand the fire, or a mechanism 
by which to turn his grindstone, are certainly difficulties which a 
superficial consideration would by no means suggest, and yet which 
reflection would show us were both probable, serious, and surmount- 
able only by great exertion of thought and labour. In the same 
way the oversights, mistakes, and want of calculation in the supposed 
hero are exactly such as might, and probably would, happen to 
everybody. Robinson Crusoe cuts down a huge tree, and with 
immense labour makes a boat which he cannot launch; but Sir 
Edward Seaward is far too philosophical to do such a thing. Robin- 
son uses all his ink, and knows not how to make a new stock ; but the 
father of the Swiss family would have suggested half-a-dozen ingeni- 
ous compounds which would serve as well, and possibly would have 
manufactured paper into the bargain. But Robinson possesses just 
the average amount of invention, ingenuity, courage, and dexterity, 
and therefore every reader can instantly and unfailingly put himself 
in Crusoe's place. 

The success of this admirable story was instantaneous and 
immense, and Defoe afterwards published a second part, universally 
and justly considered as inferior to the first. The island is changed 
into a colony ; and the quarrels and labours of the English sailors 
and Spaniards, their battles with the savages, though described with 
Defoe's neverfailing animation, simplicity, and vigour, fail to interest 
us like the inimitable history of the Solitary. The conclusion of 
the work, describing Robinson's voyages and return to England, is 
also comparatively uninteresting, though there are to be found in 
them several passages and episodes described with impressive power : 
as, for example, the ship on fire, the dreadful scene of the crew dying 
of hunger, the battle with the wolves, and so on. They are like 
extracts from the journals of some of our old na^^gators, simple, 
■unafiected, picturesque ; striking from the natural pathos of the 
rough but kind and honest narrator. 

Defoe now poured forth a profusion of narratives detailing the 
adventures and exploits of noted robbers, cheats, and malefactors ; 
showing an intimate acquaintance with the habits and thoughts of 
such persons, and giving to his narratives, by the peculiar magic of 
his plain style, all the prestige of reality, a quality which no author 
— not even Swift — ever so perfectly attained. Though the persons 
and actions described in this class of works are generally mean and 
discreditable, Defoe has not fallen into that base and corrupting error 
of more recent literature, of holding up to admiration the characters 
and actions of immoral and dishonest men, and making our admira- 



CHAP. XIV.] 



DEFOE: MINOR WORKS. 



257 



tion of energy, perseverance, and address, minister to tlie worst pro- 
pensities of our nature, bj showing these high qualities associated 
with unrestrained passions and the deeds of crime. In his ' Lives ' 
of Moll Flaggon, Colonel Jack, Captain Singleton, &c., Defoe has 
written to warn, not to attract. Among the list of these minor 
works we must not omit his 'Journal of the Plague Year,' a pre- 
tended narrative of the great pestilence which devastated London in 
16G5, written in the character of a plain citizen, and eyewitness of 
the horrors he describes. In this terrific narrative, many of the 
details of which are probably real, the verisimilitude is so wonder- 
fully maintained, that the book has often been quoted as an authority 
on the subject. As a work of mere descriptive fiction, nothing can 
be more awful, more tremenduous, than the hideous phantom of the 
maniac, Solomon Eagle, flitting through the city like a messenger of 
death, the Glreat Pit in x\ldgate, the Dead-Cart, the apparitions in 
the air, or the silent line of ships stretching down the river, " as far 
as I could see.'' 

To the numerous proofs already alleged of the power, so emi- 
nently possessed by Defoe, of what Scott has happily called 
forging the handwriting of nature,'' i. e. perfectly imitating the 
plain and unaffected air of truthful narration, we have only to add 
that singular triumph of his peculiar skill in this art, his tract 
describing the ' Apparition of one Mrs. Yeal, the next day after her 
death, to one Mrs. Bargrave, at Canterbury, the Eighth of September, 
1705,' — perhaps the boldest and most adroit experiment upon human 
credulity that ever was made. It is needless to remark that the 
whole of this admirably-contrived story, the persons, the place, the 
minute and familiar details, the exquisite solution of the objections 
to the reality of the apparition, which, with an air of inimitable 
candour, Defoe mentions and refutes — in short, the whole thing, is 
a pure creation of the novelist's mind, invented to recommend a dull 
book on death. It cannot be wondered at that this consummate 
artifice perfectly succeeded, and that, to use the sly words of the 
author, " Drelincourt' s book is, since this happened, bought up 
strangely." 

This great and original genius closed his long, useful, and agitated 
existence in 1731, leaving, among the two hundred and ten different 
works which he composed, many which will serve the literary student 
with the finest models of fictitious incidents, so naturally and artfully 
told as to extort the momentary belief of the most sceptical ; offering 
the metaphj'sician the materials for solving the abstrusest problems 
of credibility. 

In the elaborate and once universally read novels of Samuel 
Richardson, we shall see evidences of a new advance in the art of 
fiction. The leading aim of Defoe is to gratify curiosity through the 
medium of faith; and we have just seen that his primary character-^. 



258 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIV. 



istic is the admirable skill and certainty by wbicb tlie antbor excites 
and maintains in the reader's mind an involuntary and irresistible 
belief in the reality of the things and persons described. We find 
in Richardson the struggle after reality, and the effort to inspire 
belief by natural and minute detail, which in Defoe is a primary 
feature, now become a secondary one ; and something superadded, 
viz., the ideal — the creation of character. We have passed, as it 
were, from a lower into a higher class of organisation, in which the 
faculties and functions of the lower are not suppressed or extinguish- 
ed; but those which were prominent and capital have become secon- 
dary, from the addition of a new and more elevated element. We 
have advanced to another term of our sublime progression — that pro- 
gression whicli begins at zero and rises to infinity. 

All men of great genius seem to be eminently possessed of the 
quality of good sense; and of this truth Richardson, both in his life 
and writings, offers a striking confirmation. He was the son of 
rustic parents, in the very humblest class, was born in 1689, and 
was apprenticed at the early age of sixteen to a London printer. In 
this occupation, not unfavourable (witness Franklin, and other emi- 
nent men) to the self-education of an active and well-constituted 
mind, he gradually rose to respectability, and ultimately to compe- 
tence and consideration ; for he was afterwards appointed printer of 
the Journals to the House of Commons; chosen, in 1754, Master 
of the Company of Stationers; and purchased, in 1760, half the 
patent or monopoly attached to the lucrative office of King's printer. 
Having thus arrived at what must be considered as the highest point 
of an active citizen's career, and having by prudence, industry, and 
probity, accumulated a handsome fortune, he retired, in the noon of 
life, to his pleasant suburban retreat of Parson's G-reen, near Lon- 
don, where he passed the remainder of his useful and honourable 
life. There appears to have been, whether derived from nature or 
only resulting from circumstances, something feminine in his mental 
organisation ; for his works show not only a good deal of that sensi- 
tive or rather sentimental melancholy which characterises the female 
mind, but much of the female timidity of taste, the female appreci- 
ation of minute peculiarities, and also, it is but just to say, the 
female penetration, and the female purity of moral sentiment. 
Indeed, he appears to have passed much of his life among women ; 
for, being early distinguished for his talents as a letter- writer, he is 
related to have devoted his pen, at one period of his youth, to the 
service of three young women in humble life, and to have conducted 
their respective love-correspondence. Perhaps this is the germ of 
^Pamela' and 'Clarissa;" for the female heart, whether bounding 
beneath the " sad-coloured" gown of the poor maid- servant, or throb- 
bing beneath the diamond stomacher of the duchess, is invariably 
and eternally the same. It has been observed, too, with great justice, 



CHAP. XIY.] 



richasdson: Pamela. 



259 



that Richardson's female characters are, generally speaking, incom- 
parably superior in depth of observation, variety, and naturalness to 
his men; and we know that one of the innocent weaknesses of the 
great novelist's advanced life, when he was full of years and glory, 
was to receive, like the woman-worshipped Krishna of the Indian 
mythology, the delicious incense of admiration and flattery from a 
circle of female adorers which he had assembled around him. 

Richardson did not begin to write till he was almost fifty years of 
age ; when, being urged by two book-sellers to compose a collection 
of letters likely to be useful to young people of the lower orders, 
and calculated to purify their taste and inculcate principles of morality, 
he accepted the task for which he was so well qualified ; and in the 
course of execution he discovered that his work (destined primarily, - 
also, to serve in a great measure as models of an epistolary style) 
might be rendered more natural, amusing, and instructive by making 
the letters tell a story. The result was 'Pamela,' an admirable and 
truly original work of fiction, which at once raised its author to an 
unprecedented height of popularity, and instantly annihilated the 
vogue of -those affected, unnatural, and wearisome romances which 
till then had formed the sole amusement of our great-grandmothers. 
^ Pamela' (which appeared in 174:1, said to have been written in three 
months, and five editions of which were exhausted in one year) was, 
indeed, an unspeakable improvement upon the interminable and 
stilted productions which it for ever displaced; and we can sympathise 
with the delight of a female reader of that day, in obtaining a 
natural story of ordinary life, full of fine perception of character, 
exquisite pathos and tenderness, instead of the absurd exaggerations, 
the feeble pomposity of incidents, the puerile uniformity of character, 
and everlasting hair-splitting of amorous casuistry, which form the 
substance of the Cyruses and Clelias of the school of Scuderi and 
D'Urfe. It relates, in letters supposed to pass between the principal 
personages of the fable — a form of composition from which Richard- 
son never departed — the sufferings and trials of the beautiful heroine, 
a servant-girl, who is persecuted by malignity and assailed by seduc- 
tion, but whose virtue and constancy ultimately triumph over all her 
enemies, and gain for the victim the hand of her repentant master. 
Nothing can be simpler, more unpretending, more ordinary than 
such a canvas. The cause of the power over our sympathies is the 
i consummate knowledge of the human heart — and especially the 
j female heart — which this excellent author displays, and his wise 
boldness in describing, without scruple and exaggeration, even the 
most trifling incidents (whether external or mental) as such a story 
naturally suggests. 

His first work having been received with a frenzy of admiration 
by the public, and even solemnly recommended from the pulpit, it 
was to be expected that Richardson should continue so auspicious a 



260 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIV. 



career; and in 1749 appeared ^Clarissa Harlowe/ another fiction, on 
a similar tliougli more ambitious plan, and dealing with personages 
in a higher order of society. This work has obtained a European 
glory for its author, and has been universally lauded and translated 
on the continent, and even in France ; and indubitably, as a grand 
and impressive moral drama, teaching deep lessons of virtue through 
the tragic media of pity and terror, it deserves all its fame. In 
England, however, neither this nor any other of Richardson's novels 
can be considered as any longer very generally read. Accustomed 
as we are to a more fiery, rapid, highly-coloured, and wide-awake 
mode of narration, we have in some measure lost our relish for the 
manner of this accomplished artist, who produces his effect by an 
uninterrupted accumulation of touches individually imperceptible, 
by an agglomerative, not a generative process. If our great modern 
works of creative fiction may be compared to the rapid colossal 
agency of volcanic fire, the productions of Hichardson may resemble 
the slow and gradual formation of an alluvial continent, the secular 
accumulation of minute particles deposited by the gentle yet irresisti- 
ble current of a river. If the volcanic tract — the ofi^pring of fire — 
be sublimely broken into thunder-shattered mountain-peak and 
smiling valley, yet the level delta is not less fertile or less adorned 
by its own mild and luxuriant beauty. In ^ Clarissa,^ Richardson 
has drawn with more skill and a firmer pencil than was usual with 
him the character of a man of splendid talents and attractions, but 
totally devoid of morality. Lovelace is familiar to millions of readers 
as an admirably strong and natural combination of the most consum- 
mate villany with all that can dazzle and impose. In general, it may 
be said that Richardson's men, though often marked and individual- 
ised by some happy stroke of character, rather resemble men as seen 
hy women — that is to say, not as they appear to their own sex, but 
with something of that involuntary inaccuracy which necessarily 
accompanies the estimate of one sex by the other. They are men, 
but seen through a female atmosphere. The pathos in ' Clarissa 
Harlowe' is carried to an intense and almost unendurable intensity, 
and the catastrophe is worthy to be compared, for overwhelming and 
irresistible agony, to the noblest efforts of pathetic conception in 
Scott, in our elder dramatists, or in the Greek tragedians. 

Four years had not elapsed ere Richardson's indefatigable industry 
gave to the world his third and last great fiction, the ' Sir Charles 
G-randison.' In this he endeavoured to give us his ideal of the character 
of a perfect hero — a union of the good Christian and the accomplish- 
ed English gentleman. But Sir Charles, the model man of Richard- 
son's imagination, is generally found to be exceedingly tiresome and 
pedantic ; and the heroine, Miss Harriet Byron — a similar model of 
female perfection — is, like her lover, exceedingly cold, tame, and 
uninteresting. In general, we must reproach this novel, even in a 



CHAP. XIV.] 



fielding: early life. 



261 



higher degree, than the rest of Eichardson's fictions, with the fault 
of inordinate lengtliiness. It is true that these -works, enormous in 
length as they are, were an immeasurable improvement, in this 
respect as well as in the more important qualities of naturalness and 
interest, upon the egregious tomes which they supplanted ; and like- 
wise that, Eichardson's manner depending upon the progressive 
accumulation of minute incidents and strokes of character, we 
speedily become involuntarily carried away by the gentle and equable 
current of his narration, and are compelled, as it were by magic, to 
read every page of what we began with reluctance and even with 
disgust ; yet this author abuses the liberal concessions of patience 
which we make, and even the admirable and truly profound 
picture of despair and madness in the unhappy Clementina cannot 
reconcile us to the eternal bowing and formal hand-kissing of tire- 
some Sir Charles, or the minute and detailed description (occupying 
Heaven knows how many pages) of the wedding-clothes of the 
happy pair. The fact is, that, with that feminine quality which 
we have suggested as characteristic of Eichardson's mind, he possess- 
ed also a womanly interest in, and reliance upon, minute and trivial 
incidents, and a womanly admiration for fine clothes and the externals 
of human life. Besides this, he was a man who appears never to 
have mixed in aristocratic society, and the bourgeois tone of his 
mind is as perceptible in his conceptions as in his style, which, 
though always what the Parisians expressively call cossu, was at first 
rather mean and vulgarly fine, though he gradually rendered it both 
more expressive and less affected, for there is a progressive improve- 
ment in this respect to be traced through his successive works. He 
was of course personally unacquainted with that tone of ease and 
simplicity which always accompanies the intercourse of the higher 
classes of society, in which, as the persons who compose them have 
no fear of being mistaken for what they are not, they have no tempta- 
tion to exhibit themselves other than as they are. With these 
deductions duly made, Eichardson will appear to every candid mind 
a great, profound, creative, and, above all, truly original genius, 
devoting a powerful and active intellect to the holy cause of virtue 
and honour, a bright ornament to human nature, and a prime glory 
of his country's literature. 

Perhaps there never existed a character so eminently attractive — 
so emphatically loveable — as that of Henry Fielding, or *^poor 
Harry Fielding,'^ as one always calls him in one's own mind. As 
an author. Fielding was at once the complement and contrast to 
Eichardson, and in every feature of their personal and mental por- 
traits an opposition might be traced out so striking, that such a 
comparison, though perfectly true, would resemble a chapter of La 
Eochefoucauld, or an antithetical sketch from La Bruyere. He was 
descended from an ancient and distinguished branch of the higher 



262 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIV. 



nobility of England, being the son (born in 1707) of Greneral Field- 
ing, and grandson of the Earl of Denbigh. His father was a man 
of gay and extravagant habits, and, dying early, left a large family 
in very embarrassed circumstances. Henry was imperfectly educated, 
first at Eton, and afterwards at the University of Leyden, where his 
studies were suddenly interrupted, and he was forced to return home, 
by absolute want of funds — " money-bound," as he wittily called it 
himself. His father dying in inextricable difficulties, and leaving his 
son a nominal income of 200/. a-year (for there was no fund from 
whence it was to be paid), young Fielding was compelled, at a very 
early age, to eke out by his own exertions a very scanty income he 
inherited from his mother, and partly from the marriage-portion of 
his wife — Miss Cradock, a beautiful and most amiable person— whom 
he appears to have loved with an intensity of affection such as such 
an object was likely to inspire, and so passionate a temperament as 
Fielding's to feel. But Fielding was an ardent lover of pleasure, 
and totally incapable of economy, calculation, or self-denial : he 
lived in a style totally inconsistent with his means, thinking only of 
the present moment, and in three years found himself completely 
ruined. During this time he had obtained precarious and scanty 
subsistence by writing for the stage ; and his dramatic compositions 
form about a third part of his collected works. 

They are chiefly vaudevilles and light comic or farcical productions, 
such as were the fashion of the day, and they form a melancholy 
proof of Fielding's total inaptitude for the stage. It is singular to 
see that Fielding's creative power, which in the novels has given us 
such numberless conceptions of human character, should be totally 
wanting in these pieces, in spite of the bold, careless vivacity with 
which they are written. To this remark there is but one exception 
— the admirable burlesque of 'Tom Thumb,' a gay and farcical extrava- 
ganza, ridiculing (as ^ The RehearsaF had done before, and as Sheri- 
dan's ' Critic' was to do afterwards) the absurdities and affectations 
of the style of tragedy in vogue at the time. 

He was now totally ruined; but, with many other features of the 
French national character, he possessed much of that versatility of 
talent for which our continental brethren are so celebrated, and, 
above all, their contentedness of disposition and gaiety under every 
change of fortune. "His happy constitution,^' says Lady Mary 
Montagu, his kinswoman, " even when he had, with great pains, 
half demolished it, made him forget every evil when he was before 
a venison pasty and a flask of champagne; and I am persuaded he 
has known more happy moments than any prince upon earth. His 
natural spirits gave him rapture with his cook-maid, and cheerfulness 
when he was starving in a garret.'' It was not until 1742, i. e. 
when Fielding had reached his thirty-fifth year, that he began that 
career of glory as a novelist that will continue till time shall be no 



CHAP. XIV.] 



FIELDING : JOSEPH ANDPvEWS. 



263 



more, as long as men shall delight in wit, humour, originality, and 
art. At this period the ' Pamela' of Richardson was in the full 
blaze of popularity, and Fielding was exactly the man to appreciate . 
the ludicrous sides of the book which every reader was devouriDg 
with rapture. The man of fashion, the gay prodigal, the hunter 
after pleasure, intimately versed in all the mysteries of human life, 
who had moved with good-natured careless ease through every orbit 
of the social system, whose exquisite sense of character must have 
made him accurately observe every shade of human manners, and 
whose inexhaustible sympathy with his kind made him share the 
joys, the distresses, and the humours of every class of society, and 
whose easy laxity of morals held as venial any trespasses on propriety 
so long as they were accompanied and excused by a generosity and 
manly liberality of feeling — such a person must have looked upon 
Ilichardson's famous novel as fair game for ridicule and burlesque. 
The printer's choice of an humble heroine, his vulgarity of style, 
his citizen-like inculcation of strict morality and the tamer virtues, 
his homely incidents, and, more than all, perhaps, the atmosphere of 
sentimental melancholy thrown over the whole, and the elaborate 
painting of the mental sufferings and the delicate sorrows of a 
female heart — all this suggested to Fielding the happy idea of a 
parody or burlesque. Scarron immortalized himself by the ' Koman 
Comique,' written to parody the effeminate affectations, the romantic 
fictions of his time ; and the ' Joseph Andrews' of Fielding, though 
written to caricature a particular author, has not only in a great 
measure tended to render that author obsolete, but must be considered 
as the foundation of a new species of writing — the addition of a new 
province to literature — the opening of a new source of intellectual 
delight. How disproportionate are sometimes effects to their causes ! 
the sight of a soldier scraping his rusty musket was the proximate 
origin of the art of mezzotint, and the parody of a popular novel 
was the generating influence of Fielding's admirable fictions ! In 
^ Joseph Andrews' the wicked wit of Fielding gave the public a 
most irresistible caricature of ' Pamela to add to the piquancy of his 
attack he represents his hero as the brother of the primly virtuous 
Pamela, and resisting the amatory advances of his mistress. Lady 
Booby. This picture of virtue triumphant in a young footman, is 
irresistibly comic; and the after adventures of Joseph Andrews, 
when turned out of his place, and wandering through England with 
his friend, the never-to-be-forgotten Parson Adams, give noble 
earnest of the wonderful fertility, freshness, and vigour of the 
creative intellect that was to give us so many hours of mirth and 
amusement. Nothing can be more different than the manner of 
the two great writers : in reading one you seem to breathe the close 
and heated atmosphere of a city parlour; in the other you are 
tramping, a sturdy pedestrian, along an English high-road, inhaling 
22 



264 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIV. 



a fresb, bracing, vigorous breeze, and mixing with the ever-varying 
groups of passengers, or laughing soundly out with the odd vaga- 
bonds you encounter, now in a foxhunter's an tiered hall, now with 
the picturesque, if not always very reputable, figures smoking and 
drinking round an alehouse fire. In Richardson your ear is perpetu- 
ally filled with the rustle of a petticoat — in Fielding it is struck by 
the loud roar of the rustic wag, or the lusty knock of a stout crab- 
tree cudgel encountering some peasant's skull. The character of 
Adams would be enough to immortalise even the grand ' Cyrus' 
itself ; his goodness of heart, poverty, learning, ignorance of the 
world, combined with his courage, modesty, and a thousand oddities, 
make it a portrait to be placed beside that of Sancho Pan§a or- My 
Uncle Toby. 

After this excellent and original work. Fielding, who had now 
found his true literary element, and who must have enjoyed, in 
tracing his ever-varying scenes and personages, the unspeakable 
rapture of genius, published his 'Journey from this World to the 
Next,' a half-narrative, half-satirical production, not deserving of 
a more than passing allusion. This was succeeded by the ^Life and 
Adventures of Jonathan Wild the Grreat ' — a fiction in which, under 
the mask of describing the history of a notorious cheat, robber, and 
thief-taker, executed about that time, he has given us a fine satiric 
invective. The principal character is so utterly odious, so mean as 
well as so atrocious a scoundrel, that the reader can feel no sympathy 
with him, and therefore no interest in his story; but there are 
several inimitable scenes and characters — for instance, the Ordinary 
of Newgate, who prefers punch to wine, " the rather as it is nowhere 
spoken against in the Scripture," and the inimitable sermon on the 
text, "To the Greeks, foolishness." 

In 1749 appeared his greatest work, 'Tom Jones,' which has 
been translated into every civilized language. Fielding had a high 
opinion of the importance of the novel in literature ; he placed it 
on a level with the epic : and we cannot accuse him of indifference 
to the gravity of that task which he considered so dignified — the 
profession of the novelist. Perhaps in no other work do we find 
such a variety of events, each exquisitely probable and amusing, all 
converging so infallibly to a catastrophe at once inevitable and sur- 
prising. A great part of the adventures of this, as of Fielding's 
other works, take place in inns and on the road; a circumstance to 
be accounted for by the much greater duration of journeys in those 
days, when men travelled mostly on foot or on horseback, and con- 
sequently spent more of their time in journeys. This has tended to 
increase the tone of coarseness with which we, accustomed to much 
more refined habits of society, should be at first liable to reproach 
the great novelist, whom Byron calls " the prose Homer of human 
nature." He may also be charged, and justly, with a very low 



CHAP. XIV.] 



fielding: TOM JONES. 



265 



standard of moral rectitude and virtue. His heroes, never deficient 
in generosity and courage, are generally very coarse in taste, and 
not over-delicate or scrupulous ; as, for example, in that degrading 
episode of Jones and Lady Bellaston. We always conceive his 
heroes as stout, fresh, broad-backed young fellows, with prodigious 
calves ; and his heroines are singularly deficient in ladylike attri- 
butes. But hardly any author in the world has succeeded in giving 
interest to the accomplished young lady and charming young gentle- 
man who form the nucleus of their intrigue; the jeune premier 
and ingenue are as insipid in fiction as on the stage and in real life : 
and if Fielding has failed where few or none have succeeded, he has 
made ample amends in the vast crowd of admirable impersonations 
which are recalled to our memory by the mere mention of his name, 
— Partridge, Towwowse, Adams, Allworthy, Trulliber, Squire 
Western, Square, Thwackum, Ensign Northerton, and a thousand 
more. Nor would it be grateful in us to forget the rich and constant 
stream of animal spirits, fresh and abundant as a mountain springs 
sparkling as champagne, ever bubbling up, as it were, from the 
perennial fount of good nature and humanity which God had 
created in the generous heart of Fielding nor his easy command 
of a vast store of knowledge, both of books and of the world ; nor 
bis simple, vigorous, unafi"ected English; nor the tenderness of his 
healthy sensibilities. 

In 1749 he was appointed, by the patronage of Lord Lyttleton, 
to the office of a London police magistrate; and however we may 
regret the necessity which obliged such a man as Fielding to fulfil 
duties so inconsistent with his literary pursuits, and in an office 
which at that time was neither very well paid nor over reputable, it 
not only gave him many opportunities of exhibiting remarkable zeal, 
activity, and address as a public functionary, but possibly furnished 
him with some of those strokes of low life and humour which enrich 
his admirable writings. 

The death of his wife plunged the generous and impressionable 
heart of Fielding for a time into the deepest despair ; but, with that 
facility of temper which so strongly characterized him, he not long 
after consoled himself by marrying his late partner's favourite maid, 
with whom it had been his only relief, during the first poignant 
agonies of his bereaval, "to mingle his tears, and to lament together 
the angel they had lost." His second wife, however, strange as it 
may appear, proved a most faithful and excellent partner, and a good 
mother to his children ; and the warm atFection of Fielding soon 
after erected, in honour of his first wife, the companion of his early 
struggles, the noblest and most enduring monument that genius ever 
consecrated to love and grief. This was the romance of ^Amelia,' 
in which the exquisite picture of conjugal virtue and feminine charm 
in the heroine, the character and even the infidelities of Booth (her 



266 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIV. 



husband), and a multitude of minor persons and events, are evidently 
transcripts from reality, and (there is little doubt) faithful copies of 
his own early history. ^Amelia' is a delightful and touching work: 
its interest is intimate and domestic ; and whatever diminution of 
gaiety and movement may be perceptible in it, when compared to 
either of its two great predecessors, is more than made up by the 
calmer, tenderer, and more home-speaking tone which reigns 
throughout its pages. The characters are touched with consummate 
skill : Colonel Bath is a perfect masterpiece : and many of the 
scenes — that, for instance, at Vauxhall, the appearance before the 
magistrate, the adventures in prison, and so on — are drawn with 
Fielding's usual vivacity and skill. 

Fielding's constitution was now quite broken up, partly with his 
early irregularities of life, and partly by his severe exertions both 
as a magistrate and as a writer ; and having been ordered by his 
physicians to try a warmer climate, he made a voyage to Lisbon. 
Of this expedition he has left a journal, in which we see the last 
faint glow of his admirable genius, and the undiminished gaiety and 
good-humour of his character, glimmering through the clouds of 
sorrow and disease. He set out for Lisbon in the spring of 1754; 
and, after lingering till October of the same year, he expired there 
of a complication of disorders (among which dropsy was the chief), 
and was buried in the cemetery of the British Factory in that city. 
To conclude this notice in the solemn and majestic language of 
Gribbon : " Our immortal Fielding was of the younger branch of 
the Earls of Denbigh, who drew their origin from the Counts of 
Hapsburg, the lineal descendants of Eltrico, in the seventh century 
Dukes of Alsace. Far different have been the fortunes of the 
English and G erman divisions of the family of Hapsburg : the 
former, the knights and sheriflfs of Leicestershire," have slowly risen 
to the dignity of the peerage ; the latter, the Emperors of Germany 
and Kings of Spain, have threatened the liberty of the Old, and 
invaded the treasures of the New World. The successors of Charles 
y. may disdain their brethren of England; but the romance of 
^ Tom Jones,' that exquisite picture of human manners, will outlive 
the palace of the Escurial and the imperial eagle of Austria." 

The field of prose fiction, so vigorously and productively cropped 
by Defoe, Kichardson, and Fielding, was rather fertilized than ex- 
hausted; and put forth another and hardly less luxuriant harvest 
of novelty and wit in the hands of Tobias Smollett, whose genius, 
though perhaps of a somewhat lower order than that of his two 
great and immediate predecessors, was not less rich and inventive, 
and certainly not less permanently popular, his works appealing to 
those faculties of the mind which are most universal — the sentiment 
of the ludicrous and the grotesque, and the avidity for surprising yet 
natural adventure. This great but unhappy man (for what misfor- 



CHAP. XIV.] 



SMOLLETT. 



267 



tune is more deplorable tlian an irritable and querulous tempera- 
ment?) was born in Dumbartonshire, in Scotland, in the year 1721, 
and was educated by the kindness of a grandfather. Having passed 
some time, as an apprentice, in the service of one Grordon, an apothe- 
cary of Glasgow, he journeyed up to London, a poor, unfriended, 
and probably uncouth Scottish lad, with the intention of supporting 
himself as a literary man, and carrying with him his manuscript of 
a tragedy entitled ' The Regicide.' This work, the production of an 
inexperienced youth of nineteen, was totally unsuccessful ; and after 
struggling for some time with failure and distress, which the infallible 
instinct of genius must have rendered peculiarly bitter, he under- 
went the examination of surgeon's mate, and accompanied in this 
capacity the ill-fated expedition to Carthagena. If 'Roderick 
Random' and 'Peregrine Pickle' could not have existed without 
their author having mingled in the scenes which he portrays, who 
can complain of the price at which Smollett purchased his fame ? 
or would Smollett himself have held that glory as bought too dear ? 

On his return from that disastrous expedition in 1746, our author 
continued for some time the career of a miscellaneous writer, and 
generally of political pamphlets of a very fierce and virulent com- 
plexion; for Smollett's temperament was almost morbidly irritable, 
and his numerous changes of party were the results rather of per- 
sonal feeling than of any very solid convictions on public or abstract 
grounds. He published a number of satires and other pieces, in 
w^hich sincerity of invective and great ease of fancy are the most 
conspicuous merits. The verses, however, entitled ' The Tears of 
Scotland' are powerful and pathetic; and many of the lines in his 
^Ode to Independence' have a fine lyric grandeur of impersonation. 

It was not until 1748 that he published his 'Adventures of 
Roderick Random,' and the world at once perceived that a great and 
original novelist had appeared, likely to show that the fertility of 
English genius in prose fiction was not exhausted, and capable of 
disputing the crown of supremacy with Fielding himself. Nature, 
the image and shadow of God, is, like Him, infinite ; and Art, the 
idealization of Nature, and the sublimest emanation from the 
Divinity, is, like its parent, boundless. There can be no doubt that 
Fielding was a far superior artist to his admirable successor. \ His 
plots are infinitely finer, more far-reaching in their conception, and 
carried on with more skill, coherence, and probability. Smollett 
can hardly be said to have a plot at all : his works are a succession 
of adventures which have no other connexion than as happening to 
one hero; they can be no more said to be parts of a whole, con- 
ducing to a natural and distant catastrophe, than the successive 
images of a magic-lantern to form a dramatic series of pictures like 
the Marriage a la Mode, or the Harlot's Progress, of Hogarth. 
They are thrown together; they do not grow together : they are not 



268 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIV. 



an organization like Fielding's, but a mere juxtaposition. Indeed, 
so intense was the objectiveness of Smollett's fancy, so completely 
was he identified with the specific scene of drollery which was in 
hand — so "totus in illa'^ — that he perpetually sacrifices to their 
effect the consistency of his characters ; never scrupling to represent 
his hero, for example, as cowardly, ugly, or contemptible, provided 
by so doing he can augment the comicality of the incident. The 
view of life to be derived from the fictions of Smollett is not a very 
consoling nor a very elevating one : the instances of generous 
feeling and self-sacrifice are chiefly assigned to personages incessantly 
placed in a ludicrous light; as, for instance, the faithful Strap, who 
exhibits much more delicacy than his unfeeling and ungrateful 
master : and if, as seems more than probable, Roderick Random is 
a true embodiment of Smollett's own London reminiscences, and 
Strap a real character, the author has indirectly convicted himself 
of a degree of selfishness which, it is but just to say, the whole 
tenor of his life disproves. But his great force lies in the vivid and 
ever-new delineation of comic incidents of a broad and farcical cast, 
and the outrageous oddities of those numerous characters (or what 
may be called natural caricatures) which anybody may find swarming 
in society. In one class of these oddities he is unrivalled — sailors. 
His own experience in the navy brought him in contact with this 
class of men (a class still distinguished in England by marked pecu- 
liarities, and at that time forming a perfectly distinct and peculiar 
species, little known to their countrymen), and gloriously has 
Smollett worked this new and fertile vein of singularity. The rude 
kindness, the fidelity, the contempt for money, the ignorance of the 
world, the courage, superstition, and all the habits of the English 
seaman (a type as strongly individual as the vieux moustache of the 
Old Guard, or the backwoodsman of the Far West), are described 
under a dozen diflerent forms with a verve and animation showing 
the author's profound knowledge of the subject, and producing the 
most intense delight in the reader. What a number of names arise 
at the mention of Smollett's admirable sailors! — Lieutenant 
Bowling with his cudgel, the choleric Ap-Morgan with his toasted 
cheese and family pride, Admiral Trunnion on his wedding expedi- 
tion, and the ingenious and taciturn Pipes. Nor are sailors the only 
portraits which attest a master-hand : the low characters of every 
kind — prostitutes, sharpers, tipstaves, and all the vermin of society 
— are vividly and amusingly delineated. 

The next novel produced by Smollett w^as ^Peregrine Pickle,' 
strongly resembling, in its merits and deficiencies, the work which 
preceded it. If the adventures of Peregrine are still more discredit- 
able than those of Roderick, and the character of the hero even less 
respectable, ample amends are made by the side-splitting humours 
of Admiral Trunnion^ Hatchway, and Pipes, with their amphibious 



CHAP. XIV.] COUNT FATHOM — QUIXOTE. 



269 



household, and the drollery of many incidents of the hero's travels 
in France, not forgetting the irresistible supper in the manner of 
the ancients, which 

"Would move wild laughter in the throat of death." 

At two successive intervals of two years he produced his third 
fiction, entitled ' The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom,' and 
a translation of ' Don Quixote.' The former work resembles in its 
plan and execution his previous novels, with the difference, however, 
that it is pitched in a much higher key of moral impres&iveness, and 
was intended less to amuse by the oddity of the incidents, than to 
give an impressive picture of the certain degradation and gradual 
descent of infamy that follow a youthful neglect of honour and 
generosity. It may in some sense be called a companion-picture to 
Fielding's ^Jonathan Wild.' But Fathom is far superior in 
interest to Fielding's hero — not personally, it is true, for he is as 
base and contemptible a rascal as the other, but from his superior 
dexterity and address, and from the consequent greater variety of 
his adventures. He is a heartless scoundrel, who, after becoming a 
gambler and chevalier d' Industrie," dies in misery and despair. 
Despite of the gloomy and discouraging tone which prevails through 
this picture, some of the scenes (as for instance that admirable one 
in which Fathom is rooked at play in a French coffeehouse by a 
more adroit sharper disguised as a raw booby English squire) are 
full of Smollett's usual vivacity. The translation of 'Quixote' — ■ 
the most untranslatable of all books — is also a failure: it wants 
that picturesque and romantic tone which is so great a charm in the 
original — that tenderness of feeling in the midst of, and modifying, 
the wildest extravagance of gaiety, which forms as it were the 
atmosphere of the southern humour, and distinguishes alike the 
frantic wit of the old comedy of G-reece, the broad burlesque of the 
primitive Italian stage, and glows with such a steady and yet subdued 
radiance through the pages of the gentle Cervantes. Smollett's 
*Don Quixote' wants sun — the sun of La Mancha. 

During a considerable portion of his life Smollett had been unsuc- 
cessfully struggling to establish himself as a phj^sician • he was for 
some time the principal writer in the ' Critical Eevicw,' one of the 
first progenitors of that class — now so numerous in England and 
elsewhere — of periodical publications devoted at once to political 
disquisition and the criticism of books. For this dangerous trade 
Smollett possessed no quahfications but those of sincerity, learning, 
and genius; and though his strictures were never dictated by au 
unworthy motive, they were strongly and involuntarily coloured by 
personal feelings, and raised around our impatient and thin-skinned 
author a swarm of hornets — enraged doctors, offended politicians, 
and, more venomous and implacable still, the insulted vanity of 



270 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIV. 



literary pretension. For some severe remarks on the conduct of 
Admiral Knowles, Smollett was convicted of a libel, imprisoned 
for a considerable time, and fined 100/. During his' confinement he 
composed ' Sir Lancelot Greaves/ a most unfortunate attempt to 
transfer to the England of the eighteenth century that admirable 
picture which Cervantes had drawn of Spain in the sixteenth. In 
such a state of society, and among such a people, as that of Spain 
in the days of Cervantes, the existence and adventures of the Don 
were neither impossible nor even at all inconceivable; but what 
shall we say of a young English squire of good family setting out 
(in the reign of George II.), attended by an old sea-captain for his 
Sancho Pan§a, for the redress of wrongs, with the chivalrous 
language and even the arms of Quixote ? The madness of the 
Spanish hero, drawn with so delicate and reverent a hand, affects 
only a particular class of his mental perceptions, and is, besides, 
perfectly conceivable when taken into consideration with the age, the 
position, the limited education of a poor country gentleman of Spain ; 
but the madness of Greaves, affecting a mind and body otherwise 
sound, a handsome, virtuous, and enlightened Englishman (in so 
unromantic an age and country too), is a mania which renders him 
fit for Bedlam, and excites our pity rather than our sympathy. Such 
be the inevitable fate of imitation ! 

Smollett, after this, composed a continuation of Hume's '■ History 
of England,' said to have been written in fourteen months ; and after 
a journey through France and Italy, in which his splenetic disposi- 
tion, probably aggravated by ill health, found no language but con- 
tempt with which to speak of the great monuments of ancient art, 
he published 'The Adventures of an Atom,' a satire upon his former 
patron, Bute. In 1770 ill health again drove him abroad, and he 
resided some time at Leghorn, where he died, October 21st, 1771. 
Thus, like his great predecessor Fielding, this admirable novelist 
expired in a foreign land. 

During the year of tranquillity which Smollett passed in the 
delightful climate of Italy, the genius of this great writer shed its 
last and most genial ray ; it was like the setting sun, pouring forth a 
calmer and gentler radiance as it sank below the horizon. It was 
here that he composed ' Humphry Clinker,' the richest and most 
exquisite picture of English manners which his pen had ever delinea- 
ted. It is a tale related in letters, supposed to be written by the 
admirably-contrasted members of a family visiting the then fashion- 
able watering-place of Bath ; and the adventures, irresistibly comic 
in themselves, receive a double power over our laughter, and some- 
times over our tears too, when seen, as it were, through the medium 
of the characters who describe them. The irritable but benevolent 
Bramble (a portrait of Smollett himself), with his querulous richness 
of imagination, the never-to-be-forgotten Mrs. Tabitha and Winifred 



CHAP. XIV.] 



STERNE : EARLY LIFE. 



271 



Jenkins, the simplicity of Humphry Clinker, and the humours of 
Lismahago — all these make the novel equal, if not superior, to the 
finest -productions of Smollett^s meridian genius. 

There are few great names in literature whose intellectual and 
personal character present such a tissue of inconsistencies and paradox 
as the life and writings of Lawrence Sterne. Both as a man and as 
an author, there is in this truly original person such a union of ap- 
parently incompatible merits and defects, that it is impossible not to 
feel all our systems of moral and intellectual speculation completely at 
a loss when applied to him, 

Sterne was borne in 1713, at Clonmel, in Ireland; and was the 
son of a lieutenant of an infantry regiment. But though the future 
author of the ^Sentimental Journey' came into the world in very 
poor and unpromising circumstances, his mother's relations (many of 
whom were rich English clergymen) not only secured him a good 
education — finished at Jesus College, Cambridge — but also pointed 
out the ecclesiastical profession as his future path in life. Sterne, 
on entering orders, obtained the living of Sutton, in Yorkshire, to 
which he afterwards added a prebendary of the cathedral in the same 
archbishopric ; and he ultimately acquired by marriage the presenta- 
tion to another preferment in the Church. Neither his life nor his 
character, however, were more in accordance with his sacred functions 
than his face or writings — the features of Sterne being strongly comic, 
marked with a most singular mixture of penetration, gaiety, and an 
almost morbid sensibility ; while his unfeeling conduct to his wife, 
and his perpetual squabbles with his brother clergymen, were as little 
in accordance with the susceptibility he vaunted as with the character 
of a country pastor. It was one of these squabbles that gave Sterne 
the opportunity of displaying his satiric humour ; for his first work 
was a pamphlet, in which, under a burlesque history of a village up- 
roar about a " good warm watchcoat," he made so droll and severe a 
reflection on the greediness for reversionary preferment exhibited by 
one of the Yorkshire clergymen, that the person ridiculed is said to 
have relinquished his claim on condition that Sterne would suppress 
the pasquinade. In it one may see the dawn, the embryo, of much 
of his peculiar manner. 

In 1759 our author visited London, carrying with him the two 
first volumes of ' Tristram Shandy,' which excited, on their appear- 
ance, such a tumult of enthusiasm, that the writer immediately 
ascended to the summit of popularity, and was urged by universal 
acclamation to continue the book; two more volumes of which were 
given to the world in 1761, and again two more the year following. 
This eagerness of the public cannot be attributed to the same cause 
which made the ladies besiege Richardson with prayers to finish his 
* Clarissa,' viz. — intense interest in the story, and eagerness to learn 
the catastrophe; for in Sterne's fiction there is absolutely neither 



272 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIV. 



plot nor catastrophe to learn ; and one of tLe principal oddities of 
the book, and chief sources of the impression it produced, was that 
it cannot be called a story at all, seeing that it has not one of the 
Aristotelian requisites — a beginning, a middle, or an end. Its charm 
consists in the easy, rambling style, in the exquisite touches of 
pathos and humour that alternately glow and sparkle through its 
pages, in the familiarity established between the reader and the fan- 
tastic gossiping author, and, above all, in the delicate and masterly 
delineations of its many admirably conceived characters. In this 
last respect there is something Shakspearian in Sterne's manner; 
and he, like the greatest creator of character that the world has 
ever seen, develops and depicts the personage rather by words than 
actions — rather by unconscious self-betrayals than by elaborate 
description. Much of the popularity of the book arose — at least 
when it appeared — from the fearless novelty of the style, full of 
breaks and interruptions, abrupt and exclamatory rather than con- 
tinuous, which, though certainly in part natural, was also in some 
measure a trick of art. This peculiarity at first gives a great charm 
and raciness, but soon rather offends than pleases ; for we speedily 
perceive that it is, like the perpetual interruptions and digressions, a 
piece of mechanical artifice. 

The obscure erudition which so astonished the readers of Sterne's 
time, when the study of the Middle-Age literature was accounted a 
barbarous pedantry, will now be found neither very accurate nor very 
extensive; and we now perceive that this author, apparently so 
original in his form, was one of the most unblushing plagiarists that 
ever wrote, borrowing incessantly from Rabelais and Burton, and 
owing, indeed, nearly the whole of his imagery to those authors, 
even now little, and then never, read. Coleridge has acutely re- 
marked, that the character of Mr. Shandy in this novel is an em- 
bodiment of pure intellect, and that of My Uncle Toby an imperso- 
nation of unmixed goodness of heart; and an amusing parallel 
might be made between these two admirable characters and Panurge 
on the one hand, and Pantagruel on the other — the chef-d' auvres 
of the immortal romance of the cure of Meudon. Sterne must 
claim all the merit of individualizing these conceptions, of bringing 
them down from the airy regions of burlesque to the familiar reality, 
the fiesh-and-blood consistency of common life, of incrusting them 
in the ordinary incidents and manners of the English society of the 
day, and of surrounding them with a train of minor personages, as 
exquisitely real, individual, and varied as ever were imagined by the 
fancy of genius — Mrs. Shandy, the ideal of nonenity, a character 
profoundly individual from its very absence of individuality; the 
choleric and uncharitable Dr. Slop, Yorick, Obadiah, the Widow 
Wadman, and Susannah. Toby and Corporal Trim are two noble 
portraits of goodness and gentleness^ sketched in with most delicate 



CHAP. XIV.] 



STERNE : TRISTRAM SHANDY. 



273 



strokes of Humour's own pencil, and glowing with the iris tints of 
tenderness and pity. How identical are the chief elements of these 
two characters, and yet how admirably are they distinguished ! 

The perpetual digressions, interruptions, blank and marbled pages 
which abound in Sterne, produce at first an air of oddity and sur- 
prise, which soon merges into something like contempt; but the 
innumerable effusions of true pathos, the exquisite relations of 
simple and affecting incidents, will remain for ever a deep and pecu- 
liar charm, and be his title to a durable glory. At two different 
periods Sterne made a tour on the continent, first to France, and 
afterv.ards to France and Italy ; and found no difficulty in appending 
his impressions of foreign manners to the desultory pages of ' Tris- 
tram Shandy.' These impressions are often read separately as 'The 
Sentimental Journey,^ a little volume full of the most charming 
strokes of tenderness and wit, which has obtained a European repu- 
tation. With the exception of some passages of too warmly-coloured 
description (a defect rendered more dangerous by the delicate and 
romantic tone of •Sterne's writings, and one from which none of 
his works are free), this volume justifies the author's reputation; 
and he particularly deserves our praise for the gentle and cosmopo- 
lite spirit which makes him perceive and appreciate the peculiar 
merits of other nations, and do justice not only to their arts and 
their triumphs, but even to the amiable peculiarities of their national 
character and manners. This Sterne laboured to do, and both Eng- 
land and France have well rewarded him. Many of the episodes 
of this singular writer are familiar to all readers, and these are 
generally the most pathetic passages : the picture of Captivity, the 
Dead Ass, Maria, the story of Lefevre, the Sermon read by Trim, 
and a thousand others, immediately recur to the reader's memory : 
these are the most popular, because they are the most intelligible to 
all. But he who should coufine himself to these would form a 
very imperfect notion of Sterne's literary and intellectual portrait. 
The comic passages must be read also ; and the conversations of Mr. 
Shandy, Toby, and Trim, the numerous soliloquies and artful 
betrayals of the minutest shades of character, must be studied ero 
we can form a true notion of the singularly complex idiosyncrasy of 
the author, or the delicate brilliancy of his style. 

Sterne died in 1768, in London, whither he had gone to superin- 
tend the printing of his ' Sentimental Journey ;' and it is not to bo 
wondered at that the flattery which he received, acting on an im- 
pressible temperament, should have weakened a character naturally 
neither very virtuous nor very firm. His health had been during 
nearly his whole life exceedingly precarious; and though his 
writings show the warmest and tendcrest glow of feeling and 
generosity, his life was by no means in accordance with such senti- 
ments. 



274 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIV. 



If the writings, and particularly the character, of Sterne be found 
to possess a strong resemblance to the national idiosyncrasy of the 
French people and genius, Oliver Goldsmith must undoubtedly stand 
for the most complete embodiment, the heau ideal, of the artist char- 
acter. This we see in every act, both good and bad, of his romantic 
life, so full of vicissitudes, of glory and distress, of folly and genero- 
sity, of profound ignorance of the world and deep though transient 
impressibility, of genius and of shame, of childish vanity and tender 
wisdom. Much of this arises, doubtless, from his Irish birth; and 
there is not a greater contrast than between the lives and characters 
of the two illustrious friends who were at the head of the literature 
of their day, Johnson and the author of ^The Vicar of Wakefield.' 
The one is the very personification of the Englishman, the other of 
the Irishman. Both starting from an obscure and humble origin, 
both struggling through the early part of their career with every 
obstacle, Johnson emerged from the ''sea of troubles" which threat- 
ened to overwhelm him by the simple vigour of moral and intellectual 
energy; Goldsmith floated above the waves by the innate buoyancy 
of a careless and happy temperament: one was a strong swimmer; 
the other was the stormy petrel. Goldsmith was the son of a poor 
Irish curate, whose utmost exertions could hardly give bread to a 
large family; and was born in July, 1728, at the village of Lishoy, 
in Longford — a village afterwards immortalised in one of his most 
exquisite productions. He was partially and very imperfectly educa- 
ted by the kindness of his uncle, Mr. Contarine, who sent him to 
Dublin University, where the youth distinguished himself by a num- 
ber of freaks evidencing an almost incredible want of prudence and 
common sense, and proved not only in some instances the romantic 
generosity of his heart, but a total incapacity to resist the temptation 
of the moment. After having been ignominiously dismissed from 
the university, he was again received, obtained, though not without 
difficulty, his degree, and, having chosen — as far as such a thought- 
less person could be said to choose — medicine as his profession, he set 
out to travel to Leyden, where he did study some time; and wan- 
dered nearly over the whole of Europe, principally on foot, supporting 
himself in some measure by charity and by his flute. In this way 
he visited nearly all the principal places in France, Germany, Hol- 
land, and Flanders. This vagabond and gipsy life was perfectly in 
harmony with his sensitive and expansif character, and may indeed 
be considered — whatever its bad effects upon the excitable heart and 
weak moral principles of this child of genius — as singularly fortunate 
for his glory. It is assuredly in the lower classes of mankind that 
fiction will find its richest and most accessible materials. The hquid 
notes of his own flute, had he touched it with the finest finger, breathe 
not a sweeter air of feeling, a more t(^iching and tenderer meltincholy, 



CHAP. XIV.] 



GOLDSMITH : CHINESE LETTERS. 



275 



than do his writings when the theme is the goodness and happiness 
of the poor. 

On returning to England in 1756, he began to write for the book- 
sellers, and obtained a precarious subsistence by contributing to the 
'Monthly Review.' With a moderate degree of economy and fore- 
sight, Groldsmith's charming style would have soon enabled him 
gradually to obtain competence as a writer ; but economy and fore- 
sight were words unintelligible to ^^poor Groldy," whose Irish heart 
could never resist the temptation of vanity or pleasure for himself, or 
of an almost insane liberality to others. He was himself exceedingly 
fond of fine clothes, had the fatal propensity of the gambler, and his 
heart was so extravagantly tender, that he perpetually gave his last 
guinea to the first object which awakened his morbid sympathies. 
Thus devoid of care for the future, and yielding to present impulses, 
his benevolence was neither just to himself nor useful to others; and 
he may be charged with heartlessness and ingratitude to those who 
had the greatest claims on his assistance and respect. The same 
cause kept Groldsmith always poor and plunged in debt; and though 
he remained for many years the most admired and popular writer of 
his time, he never ceased to be a bookseller's hack, and closed a life 
of fruitless and severe exertion in indigence and ruin. 

In 1758 he attempted to pass the medical examination qualifying 
him as surgeon's mate in a ship of war, but was rejected; and so 
poor was he at this time that he was obliged to borrow a suit of 
clothes from a bookseller to appear in before the court, which suit 
he afterwards pawned. A letter is still preserved, written by him 
to the person he had so dishonestly deceived, full of the most passion- 
ate expressions of despair. 

It was now that he commenced that rapid succession of easy and 
delightful writings, in prose and verse, which have rendered his 
name so dear to all who appreciate unaffected grace, delicacy, and 
humour. We shall specify only the more remarkable. The ' Chi- 
nese Letters,' afterwards known under the title of ' The Citizen of 
the World,' are full of the sweetest touches of character, and are 
written in a truly attractive and pure style. Goldsmith's manner 
of writing resembles, at least in those points which are not peculiar 
to him, at once that of Addison and that of Steele ; but possessing 
a warmer and more genial tone than the writings of the former, and 
an infinitely greater purity and elegance than those of the latter. 
It is more transparent than Addison, less prim, less formal ; and far 
fuller of sentiment, more ideal, than anything of Steele's, between 
whose character and Goldsmith's there was a strong resemblance. 

Goldsmith then wrote a short and familiar ' History of England ;' 
a mere compilation as to the matter, but related in such exquisitely 
easy and amusing language, that it is a model of the art of narrative. 
Johnson said justly that Goldsmith could make even the driest and 
23 



276 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIV. 



most repulsive subject "as amusing as a Persian tale/' And 
certainly nothing but his inimitable ease and grace of narration 
could make us forgive — as we do in spite of ourselves — the shallow 
crudeness of his learning, and the total want of grasp and system in 
his views. 

It was now that appeared the first of his two memorable poems, 
^ The Traveller/ a meditative and descriptive work, embodying the 
impressions of human life and society which he had felt in his 
travels and in his early struggles. Neither the ideas nor the imagery 
are very new or striking, but it is exquisitely versified (in the 
rhymed couplet) ; and its ease, elegance, and tenderness have made 
many passages pass into the memory and language of society. It 
is peculiarly admirable for the natural succession and connection of 
the thoughts and images, one seeming to rise unforcedly, and to be 
evolved, from the other. It is also coloured with a tender haze, so 
to say, of soft sentiment and pathos, as grateful to the mind as is to 
the eye the blue dimness that softens the tints of a distant mountain- 
range. It is a relief to the reader after Pope, in whom the objects 
stand out with too much sharpness, and in whom we see too much 
intense activity of the mere intellect at work. Pope is daylight ; 
Goldsmith is moonlight. 

In 1766 appeared the immortal tale which all the world has read, 
translated, and admired — ' The Vicar of Wakefield.' The subject 
is nothing. A worthy, simple country parson is reduced to the 
deepest and most unmerited distress, and again restored to happiness. 
But the charming character of the hero — a kind of more refined 
Parson Adams — the exquisitely drawn portraits of his family, the 
natural incidents, the true and tender pathos, and the gentle humour 
— who knows not these ? The style is perfection itself ; and the 
adventures, though not always quite probable, are sufficiently so to 
maintain the reader's interest. 

In the following year Groldsmith, as if not contented with the 
glory of being the most delightful narrator and the finest painter of 
character of his day, now aspired to the more poignant rapture of 
theatrical applause. His first comedy was ' The Good-natured Man ;' 
and the hero was undoubtedly a dramatised portrait of the author 
himself, with his unthinking easiness of temper, and his culpable 
imprudence and generosity. The piece has the defect chargeable 
against many similar works, particularly on the French stage, 
namely, the taking of some mental quality as the subject, around 
which are grouped the inferior characters and interests, and which 
the dramatist has an irresistible and incessant temptation to exagger- 
ate and caricature. This is not so injurious to nature and probability 
(the prime requisites of comedy) when the species of folly chosen is 
of a graver and more reprehensible kind, when it is a vice, in short, 
instead of a mere absurdity j but when it is a mere obliquity of taste, 



CHAP. XIV.] GOLDSMITH : DESERTED TILLAGE. 



277 



the more forcible and vivid the delineation, the less interest do we 
feel in it. Harpagon is always amusing, because we detest as well 
as laugh at him ; but the weakness of Arnolphe in the ' Malade 
Imaginaire,' though we may laugh heartily at the oddity of the inci- 
dents and dialogue, is not of sufficient solidity and consistency to 
carry the weight of a comic plot. But ' The Goodnatured Man' is 
lively and gay, and some of the inferior characters, particularly 
Croaier, are touched with a humour that makes us pardon the 
rather tiresome uniformity of Honey wood's exaggerated generosity 
and self-abnegation. 

The year 1770 gave to the world the companion poem to ^The 
Traveller,' 'The Deserted Village,' a work similar in tone, but 
immeasurably superior in distinctness of aim and felicity of idea. 
It depicts the sentiments of a wanderer, who, on return to his 
native place, which he left a smiling pastoral hamlet, finds nothing 
but ruin and desolation, or relics of former happiness more sad and 
painful still. " Sweet Auburn" is supposed to have been painted 
from Groldsmith's own recollections of the village of Lishoy, where 
his brother had the living ; and as ' The Deserted Village ' is more 
distinct and concentrated in its subject, and more homely in its 
details, than ' The Traveller,^ it is incomparably more touching and 
more iDeautiful. Groldsmith was one of the first English poets of 
this age who had taste and feeling enough to rely for efi"ect upon 
simple and unornamented descriptions of natural, ordinary objects 
and persons. He threw aside all that false and vulgar affectation 
which thought it necessary to clothe such objects in a parade of 
declamatory language ; and his poem is exquisitely pathetic. He — 
and the numerous great men who followed him in this true concep- 
tion of poetical art — did nothing else bat restore the manner of our 
greater and more ancient writers, who find, in the commonest and 
most familiar images, an inexhaustible source of the most powerful 
emotions — the tenderest beauty and the subliraest terror. 

Not very long after this poem appeared ' She Stoops to Conquer,' 

one of the most amusino- comedies which the Eno-lish stao;e 

... . . 

possesses. The action of this piece is exceedingly animated and 

laughable, and the absence of any moral aim, the renunciation of 

any attempt to draw, in a principal or leading character, a portrait 

of some particular folly, is singularly advantageous to its effect, 

however it may degrade the work as a physiological embodiment. 

The personages are very numerous, and sketched with felicity ; the 

booby Squire and his pot-house companions, the prosy and hospitable 

Mr. Hardcastle, his foolish wife, and the equivoques produced by 

Marlow's extravagant bashfulness — all these, if not of the higher 

order of comedy, are abundantly laughable and well managed. 

In concluding our remarks on this author it will only be necessary 

to mention a number of histories written merely as booksellers' task- 



278 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XV. 



work — mere compilations as regards the matter, but exhibiting 
Groldsmith's never-failing charm of style : this circumstance, toge- 
ther with the absence of any very oppressive degree of erudition, 
has rendered them peculiarly well adapted for class-books in schools; 
a place they will retain till the more accurate and profound method 
of modern historical investigation shall have been communicated 
even to the elementary instruction of the young. Besides the 
'History of England,' Groldsmith successively published that of 
'Rome,' of 'Greece,' and of 'Animated Nature,' the last being for 
the most part a condensation of BufFon. 

Our industrious writer (whose life was embittered, notwithstand- 
ing his great reputation, activity, and success, by perpetual debts and 
difficulties) died in 1774, having hastened, if not produced, his own 
decease, by injudiciously and obstinately taking a powerful medi- 
cine; and left behind him a reputation as well deserved as it is 
universal. There are very few_ branches of literature which he had 
not cultivated, if not with unparalleled, at least with more than 
ordinary success. In all he was above mediocrity, in some he 
reached excellence, and in one work (the delightful 'Yicar') he has 
left us a masterpiece of originality and grace. 



CHAPTEK XY. 

THE GREAT HISTORIANS. 

David Hume — As Historian — As Moralist and Metaphysician — Attacks on 
Revealed Religion — William Robertson — Defects of the "Classicist" His- 
torians — Edward Gibbon — The Decline and Fall — Prejudices against 
Christianity — Guizot's judgment on Gibbon. 

The character of the English people is marked by singular incon- 
sistencies : there is no nation which exhibits so much reluctance to 
pursue to their utmost consequences the deductions of any new 
system or chain of arguments. The English temperament is at 
once bold and timid ; at the same time penetratingly far-seeing, yet 
almost slavishly devoted to prescription and authority. Nowhere is 
a new theory in legislation or in science more freely and candidly 
discussed; nowhere the true sifted from the false with a more 
industrious activity ; nowhere does a new truth find a more enlightened 
and ready acceptance; but, at the same time, nowhere is there a 
greater dread of innovation, or a more determined adherence to the 
forms of particular systems or institutions. 

Of these remarks the story of David Hume is a striking example. 



CHAP. XV.] HUME : HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 279 

He was sprung from an ancient and noble Scottish family, and was 
born in 1711. The greater part of his life was passed abroad, chiefly 
in France. Hume was happy and tranquil in the possession of an 
income so small that hardly all his national prudence sufficed to 
make it a competence. What is still more to his honour, he sup- 
ported, during the early part of his literary career, a degree of 
neglect and failure which the consciousness of his talents must have 
rendered exceedingly bitter — this severe trial he bore, if not without 
a deep and very pardonable discouragement, yet with great manliness 
and dignity. His first work, ' A Treatise on Human Nature,^ pub- 
lished in 1737, was received with absolute neglect; and though 
recommended by an exquisite refinement of style, and by great 
novelty of views, and a bold acuteness of argument, it " fell stilL 
born from the press." Five years after this appeared his ^ Essays, 
Moral and Philosophical,' which contain a great variety of refined 
and original speculations, often on subjects previously considered as 
hedged in" and defended by an insurmountable barrier of sanctity 
and prescription. During this part of his life he appears to have 
had most difficulty and discouragement to struggle with ; for he was 
for some time obliged to accept the most painful of human occupa- 
tions, the charge of a madman. This was the young Marcjuis of 
Annandale, in attendance upon whom the future historian remained 
a year. Hume was soon afterwards appointed to the post of secretary 
to General St. Clair, whom he accompanied, first to Canada, and 
afterwards in his embassy to Vienna and Turin. In 1751 was re- 
published, under the title of ^ An Inquiry concerning the Principles 
of Morals,^ much of the substance though now considerably altered 
and almost recast, of the not very popular or successful treatise 
which had appeared fourteen years before : and about this time he 
gave to the world his 'Political Discourses.'' Having caused himself 
to be appointed librarian to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, 
an office which he fulfilled gratuitous!}" for the opportunity of making 
use of the books under his care, he now entered upon a new path, a 
path in which he was to more than redeem the ill success of his 
former publications — that of History. In 1754 appeared the first 
volume of his ' History of G-reat Britain,' containing the reigns of 
James I. and Charles I. This new attempt was for a while not 
more popular than his previous ones, but, in proportion as the suc- 
ceeding volumes appeared, the public admiration grew ever stronger and 
stronger, and Hume was soon placed, by the unanimous applause of his 
countrymen, at the head of all the English historians who had then 
"written. This reputation he deserved for many rare qualities, for 
his philosophic views, and for his exquisite style : and though History 
has received in more recent times a very different form, a much 
wider spirit of inquiry and investigation, a far more comprehensive, 
minute, and accurate spirit, as well as a more picturesque and 
23* 



280 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. 



[CHAP. XV. 



striking language, there can be no doubt that Hume's work is of 
great beauty and value. Its chief defects are want of accuracy in 
detail, and strong partialities affecting various important principles. 
A polished and fastidious scholar, a Scotsman of aristocratic birth and 
sympathies, Hume was tinged not only with those Jacobite tenden- 
cies which were so prevalent in the higher classes of his country, 
but with an exaggerated dread of popular movements, and an indis- 
position to acknowledge the undeniable advantage which our consti- 
tution has so often and so uniformly derived from revolutions. A 
monarchist in principle, he entertained a somewhat extreme opin- 
ion as to the paramount importance of stahility in any system 
of polity, forgetting that in the case of the British constitution a 
gradual and steady progressive movement was inherent in its very 
essence — was its sap and life-blood ; and that, so far from its stability 
being compromised by popular movements, or even by revolutions, 
these were its very conditions and vitality. The English character 
has more in common (at least in its political manifestations) with 
that of the Koman people than with that of any other great and 
civilised nation with which history has made us acquainted. The 
resemblance is overwhelmingly striking when we take into account 
the immense difference between the political constitutions of the 
two countries. Both, however, were eminently aristocratic, and in 
both the principle of stability is surprisingly prominent — a stability 
so far from being diminished by incessant internal agitations, and 
even considerable organic changes, that these changes and agitations 
are its very exponents. Montesquieu has well remarked that move- 
ments which in other countries would infallibly involve a complete 
overthrow and possible reconstruction of the whole political machine, 
in England are considered, and justly so, as a proof of the vitality 
of the government. And the same thing is true of Borne, at least 
during its earlier and more glorious period. Both nations are emi- 
nently practical, logical, and calculating, and in both the attachment 
to old institutions goes only so far as to make the citizens distrust the 
prospective advantage of any proposed innovation : in other words, 
never to admit an innovation until forced on them by circumstances. 
Thus, the perpetual changes which were going on in the body politic 
were no more destructive to its individuality, nor injurious to its 
strength, than are the changes of the seasons to the growth of some 
majestic tree. Its leaves may be strewn by the gales of autumn, 
the vernal sap may rise within its vessels, incessant deposits of new 
matter and never-ceasing loss of old may continue, till not a particle 
of substance in the whole living structure may remain the same 
after the lapse of a few years, yet the tree is still the same, it is one, 
and no other, and man and beast find shelter under its ever-waving 
boughs. 

We have already given Hume credit for a philosophical spirit. 



CHAP. XY.] HUME : DEFECTS OF HIS HISTORY. 



281 



This he undoubtedly possessed, but only to a certain degree. His 
mind had early accustomed itself to abstract investigations, and his 
long residence in France had contributed to develop in him a tendency 
to those barren and endless speculations which characterised the 
French literature of the period. Acuteness he undoubtedly pos- 
sessed to a high degree, as well as a sincere love of truth : but his 
mind was cold and unsympathising ; it wanted that profound humanity, 
that deep fellow-feeling with his kind, which is the only vivifying 
and fecundating principle. In his philosophy he had reached that 
point at which all is negative : he doubted of everything ; he doubted 
even of the conclusions obtained by means of his own refined dialects ; 
and if this species of Pyrrhonism could ever become generally preva- 
lent, nothing would be left to man but the gratification of sense and 
the prosecution of mere temporary interests. But there is a point 
beyond this : indeed, a man who stops here halts on the very threshold 
of the great temple of wisdom. He who has never doubted (at 
least in matters of human reason) cannot be said properly to believe j 
and he who believes not can feel no perfect love. In his history 
Hume has taken too much upon trust from former compilers, and he 
has consequently fallen into a great many errors in points of fact, 
and been guilty of strange oversights and misrepresentations. Too 
indolent to consult, and too falsely refined to appreciate, the authentic 
sources of history in the writers contemporary with the events he 
describes, he has given us a work which is indeed a model of easy, 
fluent, agreeable narration, but a work which, if compared to many 
more modern productions of history (as for instance the admirable 
' Conquete d'Angleterre par les Normands' of Augustin Thierry), 
will afi"ord an incontrovertible proof of the immense advance made 
since his time in this branch of literature. His strong predilections 
in favour of the Stuart race have led him into innumerable errors 
and contradictions, and the whole of one most important episode in 
English history, the Civil War, the Republic, and the Protectorate, 
is full of inconsistency. This great and noble monument of Hume's 
genius appeared as follows : — the first volume in 1754, the second 
in 175Y, the third and fourth in 1759, the fifth and sixth in 1762. 
From what we have said above, it may easily be inferred that Hume 
was unreasonably addicted to paradox and theorising on false or 
insufficient grounds. Moreover, his hostility to the doctrines and 
authority of the Christian religion led him to describe in one uniform 
tone of contemptuous indifference the labours and sufferings of many 
of those illustrious men who have sealed with their blood the charter 
of their country's liberty. Religion, so intimately interwoven Avith 
the whole tissue of private life in England, is a no less prominent 
element in all public and political events; and a historian, therefore, 
who should feel no sympathy with the religious convictions of some 
section or other (it little matters which) of the English people^ 



282 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CIIAP. XV. 



might indeed avoid party prejudice, but could never succeed, be bis 
genius what it may, in giving a true picture of events. " He had 
early in Me," says Mackintosh, "conceived an antipathy to the 
Calvinistic divines, and his temperament led him at all times to 
regard with disgust and derision that religious enthusiasm or bigotry 
with which the spirit of English freedom was, in his opinion, insepa- 
rably associated: his intellect was also, perhaps-, too active and 
original to submit with sufficient patience to the preparatory toils 
and long-suspended judgment of the historian, and led him to form 
premature conclusions and precipitate theories, which it then became 
the pride of his ingenuity to justify." 

As a moralist and metaphysician Hume is less remarkable for any 
novel or original views in the investigation of fundamental princi- 
ples than for the admirable clearness and elegance of his mode of 
reasoning, for the candour with which he admits objections, the 
acuteness — always tempered with courtesy and good taste — with 
which he combats them, and above all for the courage which he 
exhibits in carrying to their ultimate results the arguments which 
he uses. His chief test for the moral value of an action or a motive 
is the principle of utility — a principle into which must be, after all, 
resolved all questions of right and wrong. It is one which has in 
all ages excited the greatest outcries against every philosopher who 
has ventured overtly to propound it ; and yet it is obvious that all 
systems professing to assign different foundations for good and evil 
in human actions are nothing else, when closely examined and 
carried to their ultimate application, than fruitless attempts to mask 
under specious forms a doctrine which to an unenlightened mind 
appears selfish and incompatable with elevated emotion. In stripping 
off the bandages of error and prejudice which envelop, like some 
Egyptian mummy, the body of moral truth, ordinary investigators 
content themselves with stopping at a secondary point. They are 
afraid to look face to face upon what they think is a corrupted and 
loathsome corpse ; but if we clearly understand the principle, and 
properly limit its application, we shall find not only that all other 
modes of accounting for what we so unreasonably consider the 
invariable sentiment of right and wrong are insufficient, but that 
this is the only conceivable and possible way of explaining the 
existence of that sentiment at all. 

Hume is considered also as one of the most dangerous and 
insidious enemies by whom the Christian religion has ever been 
attacked. The point against which his batteries are chiefly levelled 
is the credibility of the history of those miraculous events on which 
the religion founds its claim to be considered as a revelation, i. e. a 
supernatural interposition. The ground he takes is broad and 
simple : the nucleus of his arguments is to be found in the two 
famous propositions, 1st, that it is contrary to human experience 



CHAP. XV.] nUME : ATTACKS ON RELIGION. 



283 



that miracles should be true ; 2nd, that it is not contrary to experi- 
ence that human testimony should be false. This mode of reasoning 
it was quite natural that he should adopt, inasmuch as his philosophy 
is altogether of the negative and sceptical character : but at the 
same time his reasoning lies open to a powerful counter-argument — 
viz. that, if the essential incompetency of any degree of evidence 
be so great as to overbalance any force of probability, then that the 
convincing power of any arguments addressed to our minds must 
labour under an equal degree of uncertainty. 

All evidence, whether addressed to our senses (often the most 
fallacious reporters) or to our reason, is comparative, and never can 
reach the intensity of abstract certitude, for God alone can be 
capable of absolutely knowing anything : all that remains is the 
question of comparative weight between the probability of the given 
event and the degree of evidence before us (an imperfect evidence, 
but an evidence which is all that we require or can appreciate) 3 in 
short, it is a striking of a balance between two conflicting improba- 
bilities. There is moreover a fallacy in the stating of the two cele- 
brated propositions above quoted, and also something like a petitio 
principii ; for, in the first place, the use of the words " experience" 
and "contrary to experience" would induce us to imply a contradic- 
tion fatal to the whole argument; seeing that, if miracles entered 
into the ordinary operations of nature (i. e. were subjects of experi- 
ence), they would no longer be miracles at all ; and it is clear that 
a revelation cannot be founded, as regards the evidence of its reality, 
on anything else but miracles, that is to say on events which are 
deviations from the ordinary laws of nature. Whatever of dangerous 
is contained in these arguments of Hume, whatever of mischief 
they may have done to the minds of inexperienced investigators, is 
to be attributed, less to their intrinsic weight and cogency than to 
the blind and bigot zeal of many of his answerers, who, in fervour 
of arrogant orthodoxy, have replied to Hume's arguments by re- 
proaches and the ill-simulated language of contempt, combating his 
cool and skilful attacks with threats, slanders, and childish declama- 
tion. Those who have not acuteness enough to overthrow the 
logician are often content to calumniate the man : the hand which 
cannot wield the sword can always guide the dagger. Against per- 
sonal attacks Hume found his best defence in the innocence and 
benevolence of his life, in the respect of the great and the wise of 
all countries, and in the affection of his own private friends. He 
gradually rose to the dignity of Under Secretary of State, and soon 
retired from public life with a moderate, but to him abundant for- 
tune, and, after living many years in tranquil and lettered ease, he 
died in 1776 in Edinburgh, his native city. 

Our remarks on the life and works of William Robertson, the 
next celebrated name in the department of History, will be very 



284 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XV. 



short. His story is a very simple one : it is the record of a man of 
pure and virtuous life, interchanging the obscure but arduous duties 
of a Scottish pastor with the labours of an ardent and enlightened 
scholar — a career fertile in active benevolence, in the unceasing 
fulfilment of quiet duties, and in the calm satisfactions of literary 
usefulness, but presenting little materials for the narrator. 

It is singular that two out of the three great historians of this 
period should have been Scotsmen, that they should have produced 
extensive works of great and durable value under circumstances 
apparently very unfavourable to this kind of composition, and that 
their style should have strong points of general resemblance in its 
purity, elegance, and clearness. We can warmly agree with the 
sentiments of Walpole, who expresses his admiration and surprise 
that Robertson, then an obscure country clergyman, without access 
to any extensive sources of information, should have produced works 
equally distinguished for learning and accuracy, written in the purest 
and most classical English. This excellent historian was born near 
Edinburgh in 1721, and cannot be said to have acquired much fame 
until the appearance, in 1759, of his ^ History of Scotland during 
the Reigns of Queen Mary and James Yl/ This work not only 
opened to its amiable author the road to eminence and distinction, 
but, what is of more advantage to us, encouraged him to persevere 
in a line so auspiciously begun. In 1769 he published his ^History 
of the Reign of Charles V.,' and six years afterwards the ^ History 
of America,' the three great pillars of his fame. All these books 
are distinguished by an elevated and noble tone of feeling, contain 
many clear and reasonable if not very profound views of the 
important epochs in human history which they portray, and deserve 
the highest possible eulogy for the refined elegance and grace of 
their style. Robertson's mind, though calm and meditative, was 
full of a sincere and well-regulated enthusiasm for all that is noble 
and good, and he has related with manly pathos the touching story of 
the beautiful and unhappy Mary, and the yet sublimer woes of that 
great navigator whose genius gave a world to ungrateful Spain. But 
with all this grace of style, with a harmony so liquid and so gentle that 
its art is occasionally somewhat too perceptible to the reader, we can- 
not fail to perceive a sort of smooth uniformity — not a monotony of 
tone, but a uniformity of treatment — in works detailing the annals 
of such different ages and countries. There is no distinction between 
his handling of these so different subjects; we do not find an indi- 
viduality in his portraitures of such widely-differing states of society 
— and it is undoubtedly in that individuality that we must seek for 
the invaluable quality of picturesqueness, whether in literature or 
art. It would be difficult, almost impossible, for any dulness of 
narration to deprive of interest such subjects as the story of Mary 
Queen of Scots^ the character and abdication of Charles Y., or the 



CHAP. XV.] 



gibbon: his life. 



285 



discovery of America; and yet we cannot disguise from ourselves 
an unpleasant feeling that Robertson does not place himself, and 
consequently the reader, among the persons and events which he 
describes. To sympathise deeply with these, and to appreciate 
them profoundly, the reader ought to be made to breathe the atmo- 
sphere of the particular age and country in question. He ought 
not to gaze down upon them from the chilly heights of abstract 
philosophic speculation, he should mingle with them to a certain 
degree on a level. In the ^History of America,' for example, the 
author seems to have taken his materials at second hand, preferring 
(or perhaps obliged by circumstances) to obtain them filtered through 
the medium of previous compilations — a process in which, even 
when performed by the most skilful hand, a vast proportion of the 
raciness and spirit must inevitably evaporate. It is possible that 
Robertson was afraid of injuring the finish of his execution by 
admitting, in all their rude and vigorous animation, the picturesque 
details of old chroniclers and contemporary narrators, as, for exam- 
ple, the narratives of Bernal Dios and the Conquestadors. In Hume 
this absence of the peculiar tone and spirit of the age arose in a 
great measure from indolence and a philosophic (a falsely philoso- 
phic) indifi"erence to those details of social life, art, religion, and 
popular feeling, which not- only are characteristic of the particular 
age or people, but are absolutely the only things that we wish to 
know ; for the scaffolding, the skeleton of history is pretty univer- 
sally the same : what we desire to recall is not the battles, treasons, 
and coronations, for battles, treasons, and coronations are almost 
always the same thing; in evoking past ages from the tomb, it is 
not the bones, but the flesh and blood, the life, that we would 
behold ; not a spectre, but 

Our fathers in their habit as they lived. 

The third, and unquestionably the greatest, of our English his- 
torical triad was Edward Gibbon. He was a man of good family 
and easy circumstances, and was born at Putney, near London, in 
1737. He received an excellent education, and even passed some 
time in the University of Oxford; but he employed his early years 
in desultory and multifarious study, which, though it gave him the 
materials for future eminence in literature, was useless for any 
immediate object. His attachment to the Protestant faith was also 
so much shaken about this time by controversial reading, that he 
became a convert to the Popish religion, on which his father sent 
him to reside with M. Pavillard, a Protestant minister at Lausanne, 
whose arguments were so conclusive that the young convertite again 
returned to the bosom of his national Church. A religious faith, 
however, so subject to change, could not have been very solid, and 
Gibbon's works afterwards gave abundant proof that his convictions 



286 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XV. 



of the truth of the evangelic history were by no means deeply 
rooted in his mind. Indeed he soon became a confirmed sceptic. 
While at Lausanne he pursued a regular and steady course of study, 
and seems to have adopted the opinions which were so prevalent 
just before the outbreak of the first French revolution. Nor is this 
to be wondered at : his mind appears to have been strikingly similar 
in its principal features to the character of the Ency dopediste 
intellect; the same acuteness and activity, the same confidence in 
its own powers, the same distrust of the virtue and disinterestedness 
of mankind, and the same tendency towards the actual and sensuous 
rather than the abstract and the ideal. In 1758 he returned to 
England, and gave the first fruit of his reading in a little essay, 
written in French, on the Study of Literature : and during great 
part of the war he held the commission of captain in a body of 
militia. Four years afterwards he again visited the continent, where 
he passed a considerable time in travelling through France and 
Italy, and it was during these wanderings that he first conceived the 
idea of his great work. The incident, so eventful in the annals of 
English literature, took place at Rome, October 15th, 1764, and is 
immortalised in his own picturesque words : As I sat musing,^' he 
says, "amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars 
were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, the idea of writing 
the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.'' But so 
gigantic a task was not to be executed, or even begun, without 
immense preparatory labour, and without the author passing through 
a period of uncertainty and vague agitation when determining upon 
the plan, the extent, the arrangement, and even the style of the 
work. He returned to England in 1765, and, on the death of his 
father, Gibbon, who had come into possession of an embarrassed 
fortune, ultimately entered upon a political career. During all this 
time his great plan was working and fermenting in his head, and he 
underwent those throes and struggles which genius ever feels in 
giving birth to a mighty and durable ofispring. These he has 
related, and described how long it was ere his subject arranged 
itself before his mental eye in a definite form and with intelligible 
order and completeness : he has told us how often he was tempted 
to abandon in despair the accumulated materials of years of study ; 
how he composed the first chapter three times, and the second and 
third twice over, ere he was satisfied with their eiFect. Such is the 
training of genius, such are the labours by which alone great pro- 
ductions can be created. 

Gibbon was elected in 1774 member of Parliament for the 
borough of Liskeard ; but though he sat for many sessions in the 
House of Commons, he never ventured to take part in the debates : 
his knowledge and intellectual powers were very great, nor was he 
unconscious of his own gifts, but his taste was fastidious; and his 



CHAP. XV.] GIBBON : DECLINE AND FALL. 



287 



habits -vrere those rather of the man of letters than of the statesman. 
He sate, therefore, invariably silent, filled, as he says, by the good 
speakers with despair of imitation, and by the bad ones with the 
dread of failure and ridicule. In reward for his adherence to the 
ministerial party Lord North appointed him one of the Commission- 
ers of Trade, so that this historian, like his illustrious contemporary 
Hume, occupied a place in the government of his country. 

It was in 1776 that appeared the first volume of his History, and 
the book became instantly so popular that its success rather resembled 
that of some amusing work of fiction than of a grave and serious 
history. It was the talk and admiration of the day; the volume was 
found in the library of every reader, and in the dressing-room and 
boudoir of the fashionable and the fair. Gribbon was greeted with 
the warm and generous applauses of Hume, Robertson, and all the 
distinguished literary men of his day, both in England and abroad ; 
and when we reflect upon the brilliancy and originality of the work 
itself, we can easily account for the delight with which it was received : 
even its faults were of a nature to impress and to attract. The 
period which forms the subject of the work was one which, though 
fertile in splendid, impressive, and pathetic events, had never been 
studied or investigated by a genius sufficiently patient and enlightened 
to disentangle the contradictions and complexities of the barbarous 
historians in whose works alone the materials were to be found. 
The antecedent and subsequent epochs had been repeatedly discussed ; 
but the long interval between the commencement of the decadence 
of Rome and the consummation of its ruin had remained, like some 
desolate border-country, unvisited and unexplored ; it was a region 
of gloom and darkness — a twilight between the ancient and modern 
world. His genius was peculiarly calculated to give full effect to 
the grand but confused details of this astonishing picture, and his 
solemn, gorgeous, and rhetorical style was in happy harmony with 
the character of the times which he described. It would seem as 
if he had studied the writings of the Lower Empire till he had 
caught, perhaps involuntarily, something of their Asiatic splendour 
— the barbaric pearl and gold,'^ which dazzles the imagination 
though it does not gratify the taste ; and of which the writings of 
the Greek and Latin fathers give a striking example. 

We have said that Gibbon, like Hume, is one of the most danger- 
ous enemies by whom the Christian faith was ever assailed — he was 
the more dangerous because he was insidious. The following is the 
plan of his tactics. • He does not formally deny the evidence upon 
which is based the structure of Christianity, but he indirectly includes 
that system in the same category with the mythologies of paganism. 
The rapid spread of Christianity he explains by merely secondary 
causes ; and in relating the disgraceful corruptions, persecutions, and 
superstitions which so soon supplanted the pure morality of the 



288 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XV. 

primitive Churcli, he leads the reader to consider these less as the 
results of human crime, folly, and ambition, than as the necessary 
consequences of the system itself. He either did not or would not 
distinguish between the parceqiie and quoique ; and represents what 
is in reality an abuse as an inevitable consequence. Byron well 
describes him as 

*' Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer, \ 
The lord of irony, that master-spell." 

Moreover, though perpetually warmed by the grand or touching inci- 
dents he relates into noble bursts of eloquence and enthusiasm, he 
has no admiration for the struggles of Christian fortitude and the 
triumphs of Christian virtue. The same energy and virtue which, 
appearing in a heathen or a Mahomedan, fills his heart with fervour, 
and his lofty periods with a swelling grandeur, leaves him cold and 
impassible, or cavilling and contemptuous, when it is exhibited in the 
cause of Christianity. 

In Gribbon's character there is also a peculiarity which, whether 
innate and natural or acquired from Voltaire and similar writers of 
that period, renders his writings dangerous to the young : this is a 
peculiar filthiness of imagination, which seems to revel in objects 
and events of gross and sensual immorality. No sooner does he 
find occasion to relate a scandalous or obscene story (and the corrup- 
tion of manners during the period which forms the subject of his 
history gives him but too many opportunities to indulge in this vein) 
than he seems to delineate it with a peculiar gusto and minuteness 
which is in the highest degree offensive. He does not hasten rapidly 
over such scenes, saying, with Dante, 

"Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa !" 

but he seems to take a perverse pleasure in dwelling on degrading 
images. Voltaire has much of this, and never omits an opportunity 
to introduce ideas not only sensual, but often physically disgusting ; 
but in Voltaire these images are coloured by wit and sarcastic 
drollery, and are in harmony with the satiric petulance of his ridicule. 
In Gribbon the majestic solemnity of style, and the grave earnestness 
of the tone, render these offences against good taste exceedingly 
prominent and shocking. 

In 1781 were published the second and third volumes, and the 
three last in 1787. Gibbon, who has with a justifiable pride given 
us the anecdote of the circumstances attending the origin of his 
great work, has left us an equally minute and not less interesting 
record of his feelings at its conclusion: — "It was on the day, or 
rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of 
eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a 
summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took 
several turns in a berceau or covered walk of acacias, which commands 



CHAP. XV.] 



gibbon: his style. 



289 



a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air 
was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was 
reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dis- 
semble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and 
perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon 
humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by 
the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and 
agreeable companion, and that, whatsoever might be the future 
fate of my history, the life of the historian must be short and pre- 
carious.^' 

From Lausanne Gribbon again returned to England for a short 
time, but he came back again to Switzerland, where he remained till 
shortly before his death. Finding the society of Lausanne distracted 
by parties consequent upon the outbreak of the French Revolution, 
and induced by the death of Lord Sheffield, his most intimate friend, 
to return to London, in order to console and counsel the widow, he 
came back to his own country, and died in London in 1794. 

With all its defects, G-ibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire' is a noble monument of genius and industry. The stj/le is 
extraordinarily elevated and ornate, and resembles rather the antithe- 
tical tone of the French literature of the eighteenth century than an 
idiomatic English work. Indeed, so completely was Gibbon's mind 
saturated with French sympathies, that there is a tradition that he 
for some time hesitated whether his great work should be written in 
French or English. His narration is very clear, animated, and 
picturesque: he brings before the reader's eye the persons and 
events which he describes ; and wherever his scepticism and preju- 
dices do not interfere, he gives a lively, penetrating, and natural 
account of the characters and motives of men. But his moral sus- 
ceptibility was not very delicate, and he frequently lavishes on the 
external splendour of great actions that enthusiasm which should be 
reserved for the simple dignity of moral grandeur. His sympathies 
were somewhat theatrical; and though the general current of his 
narrative is exceedingly clear, his gorgeousness and measured pomp 
of language becomes fatiguing and oppressive. So great is his 
dread, too, of repeating the same word or name in the same page or 
at short intervals, that his expedients of finding a synonym are 
frequently productive of confusion and uncertainty in the reader. 
We cannot better conclude our remarks than by quoting the excel- 
lent and elaborate judgment of Guizot: — "After a first rapid perusal, 
which allowed me to feel nothing but the interest of a narrative, 
always animated, and, notwithstanding its extent and the variety of 
objects which it makes to pass before the view, always perspicuous, I 
entered upon a minute examination of the details of which it was 
composed ; and the opinion which I then formed was, I confess, 
singularly severe. I discovered, in certain chapters, errors which 



290 



OUTLTNES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XV. 



appeared to me sufficiently important and numerous to make me 
believe that they had been written with extreme negligence ; in 
others, I was struck with a certain tinge of partiality and prejudice, 
which imparted to the exposition of the facts that want of truth and 
justice which the English express by their happy term misi^epresen- 
tation. Some imperfect quotations, some passages omitted uninten- 
tionally or designedly, have cast a suspicion on the honesty of the 
author; and his violation of the first law of history — increased to 
my eyes by the prolonged attention with which I occupied myself 
with every phrase, every note, every reflection— caused me to form 
on the whole work a judgment far too rigorous. After having 
finished my labours, I allowed some time to elapse before I reviewed 
the whole. A second attentive and regular perusal of the entire 
work, of the notes of the author, and of those which I had thought 
it right to subjoin, showed me how much I had exaggerated the 
importance of the reproaches which Gibbon really deserved : I was 
struck with the same errors, the same partiality on certain subjects; 
but I had been far from doing adequate justice to the immensity of 
his researches, the variety of his knowledge, and, above all, to that 
truly philosophical discrimination which judges the past as it would 
judge the present ; which does not permit itself to be blinded by 
the clouds which time gathers around the dead, and which prevent 
us from seeing that, under the toga as under the modern dress, in 
the senate as in our councils, men were what they still are, and that 
events took place eighteen centuries ago as they take place in our 
own days. I then felt that his book, in spite of its faults, will 
always be a noble work ; and that we may con-ect his errors and 
combat his prejudices without ceasing to admit that few men have 
combined, if we are not to say in so high a degree, at least in a 
manner so complete and so well regulated, the necessary qualifica- 
tions for a writer of history.'^ 



CHAPTER XVI. 



THE TRANSITION SCHOOL. 

X 

Landscape and Familiar Poetry — James Thomson — The Seasons — Episodes 
— Castle of Indolence — Minor Works — Lyric Poetry — Thomas Gray — 
The Bard, and the Elegy — Collins and Shenstone — The Schoolmistress — 
Ossian — Chatterton and the Rowley Poems — William Cowper — George 
Crabbe — The Lowland Scots Dialect "and Literature — Robert Burns. 

The less man really knows," says an eloquent and acute Rus- 
sian writer, " the greater his contempt for the ordinary, for what 
surrounds him. A practical every-day truth appears to him a degra- 



CHAP. XYI.] 



JAMES THOMSON. 



291 



dation; what we see before our eyes and often, were present to 
ourselves as undeserving of attention ; we want the far, the remote ; 
il n'y a pas de grand liomme pour son valeUde-cliamhre." What is 
true of philosophy in general is applicable to art in particular, and 
to literature, the highest, completest, and most perfect of the arts. 
"What is the distinction between the tone of literature of the eigh- 
teenth and that of the nineteenth century ? What but the substitu- 
tion of the real and the actual for the abstract and the remote ? It 
is true that the real and the actual are idealised, are glorified, in 
passing into the golden atmosphere of art, no less than were the 
abstract and the remote, and this is an indispensable condition, for 
the ideal is the very soul of poetry : but we now find in pictures of 
ordinary life, in the description of common nature, a source of pro- 
found pleasure, emotion, and improvement. What Coleridge has 
said of old paganism may with more justice be applied to the litera- 
ture of modern times : — 

Clothing the palpable and familiar 
With golden exhalations of the dawn." 

The full and complete daylight of this new era is to be found in 
Scott, in Byron, in Shelley, in Wordsworth ; but the dawning of the 
auspicious Aurora was gradual and slow. It was first seen to glim- 
mer (we mean in modern days, for of recent periods only do we 
speak) in the poetry of Thomson, and then gradually glowed with 
a stronger light, powerfully hastened in its development by the 
publication of Percy's 'Heliques of Ancient English Poetry,' by 
the forgeries of Macpherson, and by the fabrications of Chatterton. 
Its characteristic was an intense and reverent study of Nature in all 
her manifestations, whether of physical or intellectual activity; of 
the one, Thomson is the type — of the other, Cowper and Crabbe. 

The early part of Thomson's career somewhat resembles that of 
Smollett. He was born in Scotland in 1700, and came up to London 
to push his fortune as a literary man. He carried with him the 
unfinished poem of ' Winter,' some passages of which he had shown 
to Mallet, by whom he had been strongly advised to publish the 
work. Arriving in London at the age of eighteen, he obtained the 
situation of tutor in the family of the Lord Binning, which he 
afterwards exchanged for the more powerful protection of Lord 
Chancellor Talbot. With the son of this distinguished lawyer 
Thomson had the advantage of travelling over the Continent, and 
thus feedino- his rich imagination with the fairest scenes of natural 
magnificence, and filling his ardent fancy with recollections of the 
great and wise of ancient history. The poem of 'Winter' was pub- 
lished in 1726, and in the two succeeding years it was followed by 
its beautiful companions, ' Summer' and ' Spring,' ' Autumn' not 
appearing until 1730. The four works together compose a complete 
cycle of the various appearances of Nature daring an English year, 
24* 



292 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVI. 



and are known to all who feel what is beautiful, as the ' Seasons' — 
the finest descriptive poem in the English or perhaps in any lan- 
guage. There is no country whose climate affords so great a 
variety and richness of external beauty as that of Great Britain ; 
none in which the surface of the land is more picturesquely broken 
into every form and tint of beauty, none more abundant in spots 
sanctified by memory, none where the changes of climate are more 
capricious and imposing. The finest art and the most idiomatic 
literature of England bears testimony to the intensity of feeling for 
the external loveliness of nature which seems to form a distinctive 
feature of the national character — a trait more marked perhaps 
among us than even among the ancient Greeks. In that great and 
peculiar style, invented and principally cultivated in England — 
descriptive or landscape poetry — Thomson is by far our greatest 
artist; though this tendency to study and portray Nature for herself 
is singularly perceptible in all the greatest works of purely English 
genius. With what a fond enthusiasm has Father Chaucer, whose 
verses are modulated to the forest-music of an English landscape, 
the gurgle of the brook, the multitudinous rustle of leaves, and, 
above all, to the liquid melody of birds — with what an earnest joy 
has this divine poet seized every occasion of painting the physiog- 
nomy of English scenery ! Spenser's fairy glades are full of this 
deep passion for nature as nature — Nature looked at for herself : 
neither Shakspeare nor Milton has ever written any twenty consecu- 
tive lines without giving us, often in a single word, and parentheti- 
cally as it were, some touch of natural scenery, some embodiment 
of a physical object familiar as the cloud or the leaf, ever-varying like 
them, yet, like them, invariable. 

In the ' Seasons' of Thomson, we have a subject unbounded in 
variety, yet happily limited in extent ; and it is no exaggeration to 
afiirm that there is not a possible modification of EngTish scenery, 
terrestrial or atmospheric, which he has not caught and fixed for 
ever. Everything appears in its natural light, in its relative perspec- 
tive and proportion ; and though we are of course carried in succes- 
sion through the various appearances of the year, he always has the 
art to conceal the joinings in his canvas, and to give us the feeling 
of continuity which produces the charm of a well-executed panorama. 
Above all, the work is animated throughout with so gentle yet so 
genial a glow of philanthropy and religious gratitude, that its parts 
are so to say fused naturally together ; the ever-changing landscape 
is harmonised by this calm and elevated and tender spirit, which 
throws over the whole a soft and all-pervading glow, like the tint of 
an Italian heaven. 

The language and versification, however, are not always worthy 
of the subject nor of the sentiment of the work. Though very 
much purified and simplified in his later workS; there is often an 



CHAP. XVI.] 



THOMSON : THE SEASONS. 



293 



ambitious tumidity in Thomson's diction not unaccompanied by 
vulgar and mean expressions; and though in a thousand places he 
has exhibited a peculiar felicity in finding those appropriate words 
which paint almost to the eye. 

"What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd," 

he is occasionally deficient in simplicity and chasteness. 

His blank verse is sonorous and musical, but he did not possess that 
fineness of ear which seems involuntarily to echo the wild and ever- 
changing voices of nature ; nor had he the art of concealing, by 
an inexhaustible flexibility and sensibility of rhythm, the tendency 
to monotony which is the prevailing defect of descriptive poetry. 

To relieve the uniformity of his plan he has introduced a great 
number of little tales and episodes, generally suggested by the scene 
which he is describing. Of these the pathetic pictures are un- 
doubtedly the best • as, for example, the episode of the shepherd 
perishing in the snow, introduced into the "Winter / and generally, 
where a mixture of the pathetic with the terrible is the emotion to 
be excited ; but when he attempts to be simply graceful, tender, or 
facetious, his failure is painful and inevitable. Thomson's imagina- 
tion was intensely sensuous : his delineations of love are very far 
from romantic ; and when he endeavours to idealize the passion, he 
becomes pitiably stilted, affected, and vulgarly fine ; as, for instance, 
in the bathing scene of Musidora, and little less, though certainly 
less ofiiensively so, in the so-often quoted tale of Lavinia, 

His comic scenes (as the fox-hunting debauch) are utterly gross, 
and totally discordant with the tone of the rest of the work. That 
he was not destitute of a rich and even refined humour, we shall see 
when we come to speak of the exquisite 'Castle of Indolence.' 
' The Seasons' must be undoubtedly considered, all proper deductions 
made, a truly great and beautiful work. If the poet has sometimes 
fallen into the atfectation of classicism, and drawn from the ancients 
instead of from nature; if with the majestic accents of his hymn to 
the Creator — best praised by the glory of his works — he has allowed 
to mingle some accents of earthly adulation ; if he be sometimes 
tedious, or solemn out of season ; if his ornaments be sometimes 
meretricious, and his language sometimes too heavy for the thought 
— all this, and much more, we can pardon him, for he has inter- 
preted the book of Nature with a penetrating yet reverent eye; he 
has made us feel the loveliness of a thousand objects which escape 
us from their very familiarness ; and he has given to his country the 
glory of originating a new, elevating, and beautiful species of 
writing, of which the antique literature offers no example. 

The success of 'The Seasons' was so great as to enable Thomson 
(with the assistance of a government sinecure given him by Talbot) 
to purchase a cottage on the banks of the Thames near Richmond, 



294 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVL 



and pass the rest of his days in comfort and even luxury. During 
the whole of his career he continued a pretty industrious writer, and 
composed several tragedies in the false and unhealthy taste of that 
day, which were neither very successful at that time, nor deserving 
of any notice since. They are all remarkable for mannerism, sham 
grandeur, and sham pathos, and no less for a declamatory and noisy 
emphasis of patriotism. He also composed an eulogistic poem in 
honour of Newton, which contains one or two fine passages, and a 
species of lyric entitled ' Liberty,' which deserved the failure it met 
with, though its subject, as he ought to have foreseen, was too im- 
practicable for any other result to be possible. 

In his suburban retirement he appears to have lived much more 
happily than often falls to the lot of poets, and to have been able to 
indulge not only in that pardonable and innocent luxury which was 
congenial to his temper, but also in those acts of benevolence and 
goodness that won him the love and respect of his contemporaries. 
So intensely indolent, indeed, was he, that he is said to have been in 
the habit, when lounging in his dressing-gown along the sunny 
walks of his garden, of biting a mouthful out of the peaches ripen- 
ing on his wall, too lazy to lift his hand to pluck them. So self- 
indulgent a poet was fitted to be the high-priest of Indolence, and 
he has in one exquisite composition immortalized the very ideal of 
his failing. This is 'The Castle of Indolence,' an allegorical poem 
in the style and manner of Spenser, which not only is the best 
imitation ever made of the great author of 'The Faerie Queen,' but 
one of the most delightful works in the English language. Spenser 
was, to a certain degree, an imitator of Ariosto, and the southern 
temperament of Thomson enabled him to reproduce, even more 
faithfully than his immediate model, the luxuriant graces of the 
'Orlando;' for 'The Castle of Indolence' is, like Ariosto, more 
tinged with gaiety than the poem of Spenser. In this work the 
author of 'The Seasons' exhibits a richness of harmony which 
could hardly have been expected from him, judging by his former 
poems, and the soft profusion of his lulling and luxurious fancy is 
most inimitably expressed in the languishing measure of the verse. 

The allegorical part, particularly the birth and education of the 
knight Industry, who liberates the unfortunate captives from the 
enchanted castle, is not either very striking or well imagined : it is 
Spenserian, it is true, but not quite Spenser's finest vein. In this 
individualizing magic Spenser himself does not always succeed ; he 
delights and impresses us, not with the realising and embodiment of 
intellectual conceptions, but by the wonderful variety and vividness 
of his personages, which, though bearing the names of virtues and 
vices, do not please us by what they pretend to be, but by what they 
are, i. e. men and women, masked and costumed to act in a splendid 
pageant. We are pleased with them, not as dramatic characters, 



CHAP. XYI.] 



gray: his works. 



295 



but as actors. But the charm of 'The Castle of Indolence' lies in 
the descriptions, in the inexhaustible yet gentle flow of lulling 
images of calmness and repose. This luxurious dreaminess we 
sometimes feel in reading Spenser, but it forms the very colouring 
and key-note of Thomson's poem: let him express it in his own 
delicious words : — 

"A pleasing land of drowsy head it was, 
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye, 
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, 
For ever flushing round a summer sky ; 
There eke the soft delights, that witchingly 
Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast. 
And the calm pleasures, always hover'd nigh; 
And whate'er smack'd of noyance or unrest 
Was far, far off espell'd from that delicious nest." 

This excellent man and great poet died of a cold caught on the 
Thames, August 27, 1748. 

Lyric poetry is perhaps the only important subdivision of litera- 
ture in which the earlier period of the history of English genius 
had failed to offer models of supereminent excellence. Cowley, 
indeed, had made noble essays to reproduce in the literature of his 
country something analogous in spirit and structure to the lyric 
compositions of Greece ; but in imitating Pindar and Anacreon he 
seems to have forgot the intense mythological fervour which glows 
throughout these works^ which are among the grandest manifesta- 
tions of Hellenic art. 

Italian poetry, too, was abundant in noble lyrics : Petrarch had 
shown the power and majesty of his country's language, and a mul- 
titude of great men, Chiabura, Pindemonte, Filicaja, had given 
proof that the peculiar energies of the G-reek lyiic might be revived, 
with little diminution of effect, and a not dissimilar form of expres- 
sion, in the splendid canzoni of Italy. These works 3Iilton had 
profoundly studied, and it was from their study too, combined with 
an intense perception of the beauties of the Greek lyrics whose 
spirit they so admirably resuscitated, that Gray was able, in the Ode, 
to dispute the wreath with 3Iilton himself, and to give noble speci- 
mens of this kind of writing. Gray, like Milton, was one of the 
most learned men of his age, and he also had the good taste to 
avoid, in the subject and imagery of his works, that feeble affecta- 
tion of exclusive classicism which gives so monotonous and un- 
natural an air to most of the lyric compositions of his day : and 
thus his very boldness in rejecting all the over-worn machinery of 
Greek and Roman mythology actually tended to give his works a 
greater real and essential resemblance to the spirit of classical 
poetry. The artifices of his language and the peculiar structure of 
his verse are reproductions of ancient poetry, particularly of Greece; 
but the main soiu'ce of the pleasure he gives is in the truly national 



29G 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVL 



sympathies he excites, a merit strongly exemplified in two of his 
noblest compositions, the ^Ode on Eton College' and the 'Elegy in 
a Country Churchyard/ These are works which any Greek poet — 
even the greatest — might have been proud to own; they are 
saturated with the finest essence of the Attic Muse. Yet Glray has 
in no sense Hellenised too much or out of place : he is Greek by 
very force of daring to be English. 

Gray was born in 1716, and began his career by travelling over 
part of Europe with Horace Walpole. Returning to England in 
1741, he wisely adopted an academic life, for which he was be&t 
fitted by his character and pursuits. He retired to Cambridge, 
where he continued to reside, with few interruptions, until his death 
in 1771, devoting himself to incessant but somewhat desultory study, 
and keeping up with several literary friends a correspondence which 
gives us a most amusing and lively portrait of a singular character. 
In his manners and feelings Gray was extremely timid and fastidious, 
affecting to despise the pursuits and habits of the academic society 
by which he was surrounded, and perpetually conceiving gieat 
literary plans which his indolence and self-indulgent Sybaritism pre- 
vented him from realising. 

His works appeared at considerable intervals — the ' Ode on Eton 
College' in 1747, the 'Elegy' four years after, the noble 'Ode on 
the Progress of Poetry' in 1757, and 'The Bard' (his greatest work) 
after the lapse of another period as considerable. In the ' Ode to 
Eton College' he gives melodious expression to that natural and 
tender feeling of regret with which in after-life we regard the sports 
of childhood and the scenes of our school-days. It is weighty and 
rich with thought, and many passages are versified with inimitable 
delicacy and skill ; we see here some of those bold personifications 
and sparkling felicities of diction — those "thoughts that breathe, 
and words that burn" — which give such splendour to his after lyrics. 

The subject and general treatment of the ' Elegy' is familiar to 
readers of every nation. The reflections of this poem are certainly 
not marked by any striking originality, but they are illustrated with 
such consummate taste, expressed with such a union of irapressive- 
ness and grace, that the work is a masterpiece of poetical handling. 

The production by which the genius of this poet will be tried is 
undoubtedly the lyric entitled ' The Bard.' It is suggested by the 
legend of King Edward 1. having given orders that all the bards 
should be put to death, as to them he attributed the desperate resis- 
tance made by the Welsh people to his victorious arms. The poem 
opens with a splendid and spirited description of one of these 
national poets beholding, from a rock, the approach of the invader's 
army — 

"As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side 
He wound with toilsome march his long array;" 



CHAP. XVI.] 



COLLINS AND SHEN STONE. 



297 



and the substance of the work is an awful prophetic deimnciation of 
the woe and ruin which was to avenge on the cruel conqueror and 
his house the miseries he had inflicted on Wales. The picture is a 
noble and striking one, and possesses much more distinctness than is 
generally to be found in G-ray. In this he has exhausted all the 
stores of imagery and all the artifices of harmony ; and the effect is 
singularly grand and imposing. But the poem, in spite of all his 
skill, has somewhat of an artificial and hot-bed air; the imagery, 
beautiful as it is, inspires the reader with an involuntary feeling of 
its having been painfully collected from a multitude of sources. It 
is a piece of rich mosaic ; and though the parts of which it is com- 
posed are excjuisite in themselves and dovetailed together with no 
ordinary art, the effect of the whole is rather of construction than 
evolution. G-ray^s personifications, whether of single figures or 
groups of abstract qualities, are often designed with singular felicity 
and adorned with a gorgeous splendour of colouring; but they are 
sometimes out of place, as, for example, in ' The Bard,^ that beauti- 
ful picture : — 

"Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, 
While, proudly riding o'er the azure realm, 
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes, 

Youth at the prow, and Pleasure at the helm. 
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway, 
That, hush'd in grim repose, expects his evening prey." 

The Welsh poetry is indeed full of the boldest personification — as 
indeed is that of every rude and warlike people ; but the real frag- 
ments of the bardic compositions rather give life to inanimate objects 
than represent under a sensible form the abstract conceptions of the 
mind. 

In ^The Descent of Odin' and some other pieces Gray endeavour- 
ed to reproduce in English poetry the wild and savage character of 
the Runic imagination ; but the spirit is not very happily preserved, 
and there is visible in these (as for example in the celebrated ode 
entitled 'The Fatal Sisters') a perpetual and not very successful 
struggle after effect. 

Lyric poetry was a department of the art in which this period of 
English literary history was exceedingly prolific. The two most 
popular if not most important names which we have to notice are 
Collins and Shenstone : the one is held by many, and with no small 
justice, the equal of G-ray; and the other may almost be called the 
inventor of a peculiar style of pastoral ballad writing. The story 
of both is painful and melancholy : Collins was driven by disappoint- 
ment into intemperance, and by intemperance into madness ; and 
Shenstone, by the imprudent indulgence in his taste for an elegant 
art (the art of ornamental gardening, of which he must be con- 
sidered as almost the inventor), into inextricable embarrassment. 
If we admu'e the genius and skill which has compressed into the 



298 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVI. 



few pages of Grray's collected poems so many noble images, so many 
exquisite movements of harmony, and so much splendour and pro- 
priety of diction, we shall find that an intense susceptibility for 
beauty has concentrated into the yet smaller compass of Collins' s 
productions a quantity and depth of loveliness of a kind even more 
permanently attractive to the reader. If Grray was the more accom- 
plished artist, Collins was the more born poet. In Collins the first 
thing we remark is the inimitable felicity of his expression. Grray's 
lovely and majestic pictures are careful, genial, artistic paintings of 
nature; those of Collins are the images of nature in the camera 
obscura. Grray is the light of day ; Collins is the Italian moonlight' 
— as bright almost, but tenderer, more pensive, more spiritual, — 

" Dusk, yet clear ; 
Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen." 

The ^Ode on the Passions' is exquisitely felicitous in conception, 
full of personifications conceived in the true lyric spirit : the 
changes, too, of imitative harmony with which the poet at once 
describes and exemplifies the appropriate music of each passion — 
all these form a noble efi"ort of taste, sensibility, and genius, and 
may be boldly compared to the somewhat similar picture in the 
immortal ' Ode ' of Dryden ; but we must confess that in our judg- 
ment some of the minor lyrics of Collins exhibit not only a rarer 
and more exquisite degree of merit, but are a more faithful impress 
of the peculiar idiosyncrasy of his mind. The little ^Ode to Evening' 
consists of but thirteen short quatrains, without rhyme ; but in its 
fifty-two lines we have the whole spirit and quintessence of its sub- 
ject : it is an orient pearl of tender loveliness. All is soft, airy, full 
of variety, yet harmonized into grace : it is one of those undulating 
melodies of Schubert, on which the soul floats dreamily, as if on the 
dewy breath of twilight. 

Several of Collins's songs (as for example the beautiful Dirge in 
' Cymbeline,' the stanzas ' How sleep the brave/ the ' Elegy on 
Thomson,' &c.) possess similar but inferior merit, and are not only 
fuller of the poet's peculiar charm, but more likely to defy future 
rivalry, than the more elaborate works, such as the ' Ode on the 
Highland Superstitions,' that to 'Liberty,' or the 'Oriental Ec- 
logues:' these last, though beautiful, and though admired when they 
appeared as being one of the first attempts to employ in English 
poetry Eastern imagery, yet have been much surpassed by more 
recent writers, better acquainted with the real manners and nature 
of the "Morning-Land." 

The 'Pastorals' of Shenstone were singularly popular in their 
day, and are still admired by the young. Whatever charm they 
possess is owing to their smooth and easy language, their simple 
equable fluency, and also to the true but slender vein of natural 
sentiment, which makes us forget their intolerable mawkishness, 



CHAP. XVI.] SHEXSTOXE : THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. 



299 



and the absurd affectation of the persons and manners of their 
shepherds and shepherdesses. 

Shenstone affirmed that the vicissitudes of hope, despair, jealousy, 
and sorrow, painted -with a faithful though feeble pencil in these 
emasculated compositions, were records of a real passion : and those 
who think, with us, that a single touch of nature will give value to 
the weakest execution, will look with no implacable severity even 
upon the wearisome fadeurs of this " Bucolical Juvenal." 

But in spite of the false innocence and querulous monotony of 
these Pastorals, Shenstone has in one exquisite and original little 
poem shown that when he had the courage to trust to reality and 
nature he could produce what was excellent, nay, inimitable in its 
kind. We have spoken of Thomson's delightful imitation of 
Spenser in ' The Castle of Indolence •/ Shenstone's ' Schoolmistress' 
is a somewhat similar imitation of the language and versification 
of the English Ariosto, though with considerable differences of 
treatment. 

Shenstone has taken for his theme the humble character of a 
village schoolmistress, and the poem (which is very short) is an 
exquisite specimen of that kind of burlesque which is ludicrous 
without ceasing to be reverential. Of course there is little or no 
allegory ; and so far this work neither enters into any dangerous 
rivalry with Thomson, nor provokes any recollection but an agreeable 
one of Spenser; and the quaintness of the antiquated diction is in 
delightful unison with the pleasant rustic details, related with 
enchanting ease and simple homely tenderness. 

But perhaps the most remarkable indication of the tendency 
(obscure at first and uncertain, but rapidly acquiring a definite direc- 
tion) towards a new and distinct tone of romanticism, is to be 
observed in the two remarkable forgeries which had so powerful an 
effect on literature, not only in Eng-land but on the Continent — the 
fabrications of Macpherson, and the Rowley poems of Chatterton. 
Of these the former had an infinitely wider popularity, particularly 
abroad ; and it is not too much to say that they gave a strong and 
peculiar colouring to poetry, which was even more durable in France 
and Germany than in England. The works which formed the 
favourite and almost only poetical reading of Napoleon, and which 
Madame de Stael assigned as the proof of that wild and pensive 
melancholy which foreigners considered as characteristic of the 
English mind, must certainly deserve our notice. The history of 
this strange imposition is as follows : — James Macpherson, a vain 
and needy Scotsman, published, about 1760, a small volume of frag- 
ments, purporting to be prose translations of ancient legendary 
poems still current in the highlands of Scotland, and relating, in 
the Erse or Gaelic dialect of the Celtic language, the exploits of 
heroes. These Macpherson pretended to have merely put into 



300 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVI. 



English, adopting for the purpose a peculiar abrupt and declamatory 
but modulated prose, full of bold metaphor and apostrophe, which 
was itself a new and striking innovation in poetry, and tended to 
increase the air of authenticity. The success of this volume was 
immense : and having obtained a subscription to enable him to travel 
through the wild and solitary mountain districts of his country, 
Macpherson soon produced a fresh supply of similar remains, among 
which were several regular heroic narratives of considerable length. 
The discovery of such a treasury of new and impressive forms of 
poetry in a savage region, the singular and complete delineations of 
a very chivalrous tone of manners and sentiment existing at a very 
remote age, the recurrence of names and events which still lived in 
the popular legends of the Celtic tribes — all these gave rise to a 
violent controversy respecting the authenticity of the poems. TBis 
controversy Macpherson could have immediately settled by the pro- 
duction of the Gaelic originals, but this he refused or was unable to 
do; and after long and furious discussions, in which the national 
vanity of the Highlanders was irritated by the contemptuous incre- 
dulity of southern literary men, the Highland Society made minute 
and extensive investigations (by addressing a circular letter of ques- 
tions to the Gaelic pastors of the mountain country) to set at rest a 
question which had almost become a matter of national importance. 
From the evidence thus collected it appeared, first, that a great many 
of the names and events which figure in the Ossianic poems were 
familiar to the legendary recollections of the Highlanders, and even 
of the Welsh and Irish Celts; secondly, that, though some of the 
imagery employed by Macpherson was really to be found in ancient 
Gaelic poems, yet that nothing like those compositions, or any one 
of them in particular, was to be found existing in the Celtic language 
in an independent, complete, and substantive form. A critical exami- 
nation further showed that such a raised, artificial, and theatrical 
tone of sentiment could never have existed among such a people and 
at such an epoch as Scotland in the fourth and fifth centuries ; and 
a still more minute inspection established the fatal fact that Macpher- 
son was one of the boldest, most reckless, unblushing plagiarists who 
ever existed. Homer, Virgil, the Hebrew Scriptures, even later 
poets of his own country, as Milton and Shakspeare — all had been 
ransacked to furnish forth images for this Celtic paradise. Words- 
worth has well observed that the conceptions of really ancient poetry 
are invariably simple, direct, distinct. Nature appears to the yet 
unidealising eye of primitive genius, as she does to the physical eye, 
well defined and vivid : but in Ossian all is vague, misty, phantom- 
like. In the early ages of poetry, as in human infancy, the imagi- 
nation corporealizes the remote : it is the last refinement of the ideal 
to spiritualise the near. 

The perpetual recurrence of the same images in Ossian, the grass 



CHAP. XVI.] 



OSSIAN — CHATTERTON. 



301 



waving in the blast, the mist rolling around the grey rock, the lonely 
tomb of the warrior, the heath, the voiceful torrent, and the dim 
watery phantom floating over the moonlit desert, — these undoubtedly 
give a certain impressive wildness, and breathe over the reader's 
mind a feeling of vague sadness, vastness, and desolate grandeur ; 
but the charm is soon broken, and, after looking for a short time 
upon the cloudy exaggeration of Ossian as the very top and consum- 
mation of the sublime, we return with renewed ardour to the true, 
simple, unaffected splendour of real poetry. 

The experiments made by Chatterton upon public credulity, con- 
ceived with such boldness, executed with such genius, and persevered 
in with such haughty stoicism of pride, present one of the most 
singular phenomena in the history of the human intellect. Of all 
men, 

" Chatterton, the marvellous boy. 
The sleepless soul, that perish'd in his pride," 

appears to have been the most precocious; and the whole of his 
short but melancholy tale is a dread proof of the danger of a too 
early development of intellect. He was born a man, his mind burst 
at once into full flower, and, like some plant made prematurely to 
bloom, it faded and withered " with all its blushing honours thick 
upon it.'^ No .eulogy can be more wonder-exciting than the simple 
recapitulation of his history. He was the son of a sexton and 
parish schoolmaster, and was born at Bristol in 1752. Left an 
orphan by the death of his father, he passed his infancy in the 
deepest poverty, and received no other education than that of a 
charity-school. And yet this child, one of the humblest natives of 
a provincial town, wrote, at eleven years of age, verses which are 
not only equal to the early productions of any of the extraordinary 
poets who ever lived, but will more than bear a comparison with the 
average compositions of his day. With a mind strongly impressed 
with the peculiar character of the Gothic architecture, of which 
Bristol affords some noble examples, and exhibiting a peculiar 
susceptibility to the impressions of Middle-Age art, this miraculous 
child conceived the idea of forging, not some detached records of 
antiquity, but a whole literature — of creating a style, a language, 
an author, a society of the fifteenth century. In this colossal 
project he succeeded so far as to deceive almost all the literary men 
of his own day, and to extort from after-times a wondering admira- 
tion, which has been almost driven to deny irrefragable philological 
proof, rather than to grant the possibility of such poems being the 
forgery of the uneducated son of a Bristol gravedigger. 

At the age of fourteen Chatterton was apprenticed to an attorney, 
and this occupation, however insupportable it may have been to so 
haughty and sensitive a character, undoubtedly furnished him with 
new means for the accomplishment of his future experiments ou 



802 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVI. 



credulity, by making him acquainted with the barbarous Latin and 
Norman French — the relics of feudal and mediaeval phraseology — 
which abound in the language of English jurisprudence. His first 
attempt was suggested by the completion of a new bridge over the 
Avon, when he sent to a newspaper a minute account of the cere- 
monies that had solemnised the opening of the old bridge, which he 
pretended to have copied from an ancient manuscript discovered by 
himself, containing a rich and gorgeous account of civic and chival- 
ric processions, tournaments, miracle-plays, and solemn church cere- 
monies, with a sermon or benediction pronounced on the new struc- 
ture by a saint of whom nobody had ever heard ! Nor were these 
wonderful impositions devoted only to gratify the municipal vanity 
of the public of his native city ; his inexhaustible invention found 
relics of antiquity adapted to the tastes and failings of his friends 
and acquaintance : to Mr. Burgum, a pewterer of Bristol, who was 
fond of heraldry, Chatterton gives a pedigree, deducing the descent 
of the honest tradesman from the days of William Duke of Nor- 
mandy, and making him the representative, in a direct line, of "Od, 
Duke of Blois and Earl of Holderness.'' To a pious divine the 
youth presents a fragment of a sermon on the Divinity of the Holy 
Spirit, pretended to have been preached in the fifteenth century; 
and another person, enthusiastic for the architectural antiquities of 
the city, is gratified with a minute account of all the churches, the 
castle, &c., accompanied by drawings of the principal objects, as 
made by the "gode preeste Thomas Bowleie.'^ These, and a thou- 
sand more parchments on the most multifarious subjects, Chatterton 
pretended to have discovered in an old chest which had been 
deposited in the treasury or muniment-room of St. Mary Iledcliff"e, 
at Bristol, of which church Chatterton's father had been sexton. It 
was customary in the Middle Ages to secure deeds and other im- 
portant documents by placing them under the protection of conse- 
crated walls. In this church there had been preserved a number of 
these chests, and among them one called "Ganyng's coSre,'' con- 
taining the deeds, grants, &c., of one William Canyng, a great 
merchant of Bristol. "Canyng's coifre^' had been broken open by 
order of the magistrates, and all the parchments considered of any 
importance (grants and specifications of land, houses, &c.) had been 
taken away. It was among the parchments which remained in the 
chest that Chatterton pretended to have discovered the extraordinary 
productions which he gave to the world; and he invented a complete 
history to explain their nature and contents. He ajfirmed that the 
*^gode Willyam Canynge,'^ a great and royal merchant of Bristol in 
the fifteenth century, who had been a great beautifier and benefactor 
of his native city, had employed the monk, Thomas Rowley, to 
travel about and collect curiosities for this mediaeval virtuoso. Bow- 
ley is represented as an artist, as an arciiitect, as a herald, as a 



CHAP. XYI.] 



CHATTEKTOX. 



303 



dramatist, as a diyine. Among the fragments are a number of pas- 
torals in dialogue; a portion of a tragedy on the subject of Ella, a 
Bristolian hero; an admirable ballad entitled 'The Death of Sir 
Charles Bawdin a number of heraldic notices, plans and elevations 
of buildings; accounts of painters and stainers of glass — in a word, 
a most vast and miscellaneous collection of documents, alj of them 
wonderfully interesting, and all tending to redound to the glory of 
Bristol and the fame of the accomplished and munificent " Maistre 
Canynge/' Examined, however, by the light of the more accurate 
knowledge of our days, these pretended relics of the fifteenth cen- 
tury are full of fatal and inevitable errors, inconsistencies, and para- 
chronisms : the heraldic devices, for example, are such as rebel 
against the most fundamental rules of the art; the architecture 
could never have existed in any age ; the very artful employment of 
old words, from Chaucer and similar authors, proves that Chatterton 
did not always understand the old French which formed a chief ele- 
ment in his mosaic of obsolete diction (as, for example, he used the 
Chaucerian word "mormal'^ in the sense of a dish, whereas it 
is really a disease — mort-vial). These mistakes are of course fatal 
to the authenticity of the poems, and are only a proof of the enor- 
mous diuiculty of forging an ancient composition with any chance of 
permanent success ; but they cannot diminish our wonder and admi- 
ration for the boldness, the invention, the ingenuity, and perseverance 
of Chatterton. The diction and orthography he adopted is such as 
never could have existed at any period of the English language ; 
and perhaps the chief and most fatal weakness of the poems is 
the facility, harmony, and variety of the versification. 

There can be no doubt of the admirable merit of the poems 
themselves : they are full of genius, and some of them are in the 
highest degree dignified and sublime ; but this beauty and sublimity 
is certainly not of the fifteenth century; so that whatever glory 
Chatterton loses as an antiquarian, he more than recovers as a poet. 
As a poet alone he would, if he had lived, have been the greatest 
of his age. 

After exciting intense interest in Bristol, and giving rise to a long 
controversy as to their authenticity, these poems were submitted by 
Walpole to Gray and Mason, who at once decided them to be forge- 
ries : but there still remained many who believed it impossible that 
an uneducated lad could have invented such an astonishing mass of 
fabrication. Full of the consciousness of intellect, glowing with 
the "indomitable pride'' of a haughty, sensitive, passionate, and 
meditative mind, this unhappy child of genius came to London, with 
the intention of living by his pen. On, on he struggled, in the 
midst of the most dreadful poverty, writing political lampoons and 
contributing to the newspapers and reviews. His life was laborious, 
almost stoically self-denying ; at one time his proud and ardent spirit 
25* 



304 



OUTLINES OE GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP- XVI. 



was revelling in the hope of fame and near success and when he 
sent to the mother and sister he so tenderly loved the largest share 
of his miserable gains, he would prophesy them wealth, honour, 
power, and reputation ; but soon his spirit was plunged again into 
despondency and despair. It is truly dreadful to follow even in 
imagination the struggles and the vicissitudes of such an existence — 
the agonies for mere life, for bread, the agonies of such a soul as 
Chatterton's. They were not long. After gaining for a short time 
a precarious subsistence as a writer, and having gradually descended 
into the very abyss and depth of poverty, he tore up all his papers, 
shut himself in his miserable garret, and poisoned himself with 
arsenic, August, 25, 1770. When he destroyed himself he was not 
quite eighteen ! On the day before his death he refused the offer 
of a dinner from his landlady ; the fangs of famine must have been 
tearing at his very vitals with a burning anguish like that of the 
morrow's poison, and yet his more than Spartan pride revolted at 
the idea of alms. 

His compositions during the latter part of his career, though 
vigorous and spirited, are not only coarse and scurrilous, but manifestly 
inferior to the Rowley poems : like the wonderful mocking-bird of 
the western forests, his note of mimicry was sweeter than his natural 
song. 

The great poet or artist is not he who feels that the common topics 
of daily life, the universal interests of mankind, are too vulgar to 
form the groundwork of his creative energy, and who is ever thirst- 
ing after the vast, the distant, and the extraordinary. His creations 
are not like the far and brilliant stars of heaven, but like the daisies 
at our feet, rooted in the common earth of our nature, and watered 
by the universal dews of human sympathy. Of the truth of these 
remarks the literary character of William Cowper is a strong testi- 
mony : he is emphatically the poet of ordinary and intimate life, of 
the domestic emotions, of household happiness. His muse is a 
domestic deity, a familiar Lar, and his countrymen have enshrined 
his verses in the very holiest penetralia of their hearths. Cowper 
was one of the first poets — even among the English — who ventured 
to describe those familiar thoughts, feelings, and enjoyments which 
are imaged by the word home — that word which echoes so deeply 
in the English heart, that word for which so many cultivated lan- 
guages have neither synonym nor equivalent. The life of this great 
and truly original poet was singularly unhappy ; the greater part of 
it was clouded with insanity, taking one of the most dreadful forms 
of that terrible disease — a form unhappily but too common in 
England, i. e. religious melancholy. Few things are more touching 
than the history of Cowper's life, as it is related, with more than 
feminine grace, innocence, and tenderness, in his own inimitable 
letters ; and we can understand the devotedness with which so many 



CHAP. XVI.] 



COWPER. 



305 



of his friends sacrificed tlieir whole existence to cherish and console 
a being so gifted, so fascinating, and so unhappy. The dim shadow, 
too, of an early and enduring but hopeless love, throws over the 
picture a soft and pensive tint, like moonlight on some calm land- 
scape. His first attack of insanity was brought on by a morbid 
timidity; and though the disease must have been long latent in his 
system, it appears to have been carried to a crisis by the agitation 
which he felt at the idea of appearing before the House of Lords to 
be examined touching his appointment to an office connected with 
that portion of our legislature. He was reduced to such agonies of 
fear and despair, that, after an unsuccessful attempt to commit sui- 
cide, he was removed to a madhouse, where he remained a considera- 
ble time. When discharged from restraint, with his whole system 
shattered and tremblingly irritable, he retired to Huntingdon, where 
he resided in the family of Mr. Unwin, a clergyman, whose friend- 
ship greatly contributed to his recovery and happiness. On Unwin's 
death, Cowper, with the widow of his deceased friend, changed his 
residence to Olney, in Buckinghamshire, where he contracted a close 
intimacy with Mr. Newton, the rector of that parish. The seeds of 
the dreadful malady from which he had already suffered were of 
course not enidicated, and they were unfortunately ripened gradually 
into a fatal growth by the fervours of fanatic enthusiasm. Newton 
was a man of powerful energies, and undoubtedly animated by good 
intentions, but he was deeply tinged with that exaggerated and 
gloomy mysticism which is the reproach of the Calvinistic or Low- 
Church party. Accustomed to pay an undue attention to internal 
religious impressions, considering every sensation as the immediate 
interposition of Divine influence, and consequently fostering that 
spirit of valetudinarianism which is even more fatal to the mind than 
to the body, a more unfortunate associate for a man in Cowper's sad 
condition could not be conceived : rest and cheerfulness was the only 
treatment proper for such a case. 

With the narrow inquisitorial spirit of his sect, Newton soon con- 
stituted himself the religious adviser — the confessor, in fact — of 
Cowper, and kept up in his timid, sensitive, impressionable heart, 
a morbid irritability which nothing but a mind naturally powerful 
could have resisted. 

It is singular enough that Cowper's poetical genius was not exhi- 
bited till an unusually advanced age : he was fifty before he obtained 
any reputation as a writer. During the early part of his residence 
at Olney, Cowper's existence had been that of a religious recluse : 
either dreading the agitations of life, or feeling his heart and brain 
still sore from the recent lashes of disease, he occupied himself with 
the most tranquil and innocent amusements, making bird-cages, 
taming hares, and so on. He was again overwhelmed by a new and 
severe attack of his malady, and it was in recovering from this that 



806 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVI. 



he turned to literature as a pastime rather than a serious occupation. 
Previous to this moment he had written nothing except a collection 
of hymns, entirely unworthy of his great though as yet undeveloped 
powers : and it was at the suggestion of Lady Austen, a member of the 
little affectionate circle of devoted friends by which he was surrounded, 
that he roused himself to exertions which were to render his name 
immortal. This lady, a gay and accomplished person, seems to have 
possessed over Cowper an influence which would have been in the 
highest degree salutary; but Mrs. Unwin, who feared that the poet's 
affections might be transferred to a more attractive rival, seems to 
have forced upon him the alternative of renouncing either the friend- 
ship of Lady Austen or her own. In this dilemma, Cowper's obli- 
gations to Mrs. Unwin, of course, rendered it impossible for him to 
hesitate, and he was deprived of the healthy intercourse which might 
have served to some extent as an antidote against the intoxicating 
poison of enthusiastic religion. It was Lady Austen who gave 
Cowper, as a subject for his verse, her sofa, which the poet after- 
wards expanded into the admirable ' Task it was she who related 
to him the story of ^ John Gilpin;' and, in short, her society, had 
he been happily removed from the fatal influence of the Newtons 
and Unwins, might have restored Cowper to the world. 

In ^The Task,' the first poem by which he became generally 
popular, he starts from a mock-heroic introduction, in the manner of 
Ambrose Philips, giving a ludicrous account of the rise and origin 
of the sofa, and gradually and easily glides into exquisite descriptions 
of rural scenery, inimitable pictures of homeborn and domestic 
happiness, and reflections upon all that is most interesting and impor- 
tant in the moral, religious, and social life of man. What must 
have been the innate strength and nobility of Cowper's mind, which 
could rise superior (as he generally does) to the wretched supersti- 
tions of a narrow-minded and exclusive sect ! His versification (for 
the most part he wrote in blank verse) was at first intentionally made 
rough and irregular, partly for the purpose of giving a colloquial air 
to his works, and partly from a false notion that the solemn truths 
he inculcated would only have been degraded by the ornaments of 
art : but this error was afterwards much corrected. His language is 
in the highest degree easy, familiar, and consequently impressive ; 
there is no author who so completely talks to his reader — none 
whose works breathe so completely of the individuality and personal 
character of their writer. He abounds in descriptions of scenery ; 
and we hardly regret that he should have passed his life among the 
dull levels of the Ouse, when we think that the power of his genius 
has given an unfading grace and interest to landscapes in themselves 
neither romantic nor sublime. It appears to us that he is greatly 
inferior to Thomson in comprehensiveness and rapidity of picturesque 
perception ; but then his mode of expression is simpler, less ambitious, 



CHAP. XVI.] COWPER: the task — HOMER. 



807 



and in purer taste, and he surpasses not only the author of The 
Seasons/ but perhaps all poets, in the power of communicating 
interest to the familiar details of domestic life. His humour was 
very delicate and just, and his descriptions of the common absurdi- 
ties of ordinary intercourse are masterly. When rising, as he often 
and gracefully does, into the loftier atmosphere of moral or religious 
thought, he exhibits a surprising ease and dignity : his mind was of 
that rare order which can rise without effort and sink without mean- 
ness. He is uniformly earnest and sincere ; and though in many 
passages he has shown traces of the bigoted and exaggerated spirit 
of Calvinistic theology, that tendency to see judgments in the most 
ordinary accidents of life, and perhaps somewhat too, of the indeco- 
rous mingling of religious impressions with the common concerns of 
daily existence, it is only wonderful how he could have lived so long 
in the heated atmosphere of enthusiasm, without losing the candour, 
benevolence, and good sense of his character. 

After 'The Task/ Cowper produced a new translation of the 
'Iliad' of Homer. He was fully aware of the defects of Pope's 
version, and endeavoured to approach nearer to the majestic simpli- 
city, the primeval grandeur, of the original ; and for this purpose he 
used blank verse as his medium. But Cowper has failed almost as 
signally as Pope had done before him : his version is indeed rather 
more faithful, but it is tedious and monotonous ; it has neither the 
might and ever-varying splendour of the original, nor the delicate 
artificial graces of Pope, who, if he could not imitate the peculiar 
and Scriptural sublimity of the Greek — 

"The large utterance of the early Gods" — 

at least made up for the want of that quality by elegance and sweet- 
ness peculiar to himself. Neither the recluse of Olney nor the 
skilful satirist of Twickenham has approached the rough energy, 
the truly Homeric fire, or even the resounding oceanic music of old 
Chapman. The translation of Homer was published by subscrip- 
tion, and was tolerably successful; and shortly after the poet 
migrated with all his friends to Weston, a beautiful village near 
Olney. Here he again fell into a deep and increasing gloom of 
religious despondency, and the death of Mrs. Unwin, in 1796, was 
the last blow to the unhappy poet's sanity. He lingered on for 
three years in misery and despair, and died on the 25th of April, 
1800. The last verses he ever wrote, 'The Castaway,' form a most 
melancholy record of his dreadful state of mind, and may be com- 
pared with the somewhat similar composition of Byron, written 
shortly before his death. Both breathe the very music of sorrow, 
but Cowper's is without hope, and Byron's sadness is dignified by 
resignation and manly fortitude. His finest and most popular poems 
are those which contain a mingling of serious reflection, description, 



308 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVI. 



and comic painting of character, in which last he has a truly Addi- 
sonian grace and delicacy. Some of his minor and more fari>iliar 
works, as the exquisite lines to Mary (Mrs. Unwin), the verses on 
his mother's picture, are perhaps unequalled in their particular 
manner. It is on these, on the ' Table-Talk,' and on ' The Task,' 
that his reputation is based : it is a glory that will endure as long 
as our language. Cowper was born in 1731, and died at the age of 
sixty-nine. 

If Cowper be the poet who with a wise boldness has depicted the 
joys and woes of domestic and fireside life in rural England, paint- 
ing what he saw and felt, not in the colours of meretricious orna- 
ment, but in the sober hues of truth, Crabbe must be considered as 
essentially the poet of the poor — of the English poor. Cowper 
contented himself with turning the telescopic glance of poesy into 
the quiet retreats of virtuous, refined, and educated retirement, while 
Crabbe directed it into the squalid dens of plebeian misery, the 
workhouse, the gaol, and the smuggler's hut. It is very singular to 
observe that Cowper, the man of exquisite refinement and sensi- 
bility, of aristocratic birth and elegant tastes, should exhibit in his 
style and tone of thinking a frequent air of ruggedness and asperity, 
while his great contemporary, born in the very depth of poverty, 
and nursed during his hard infancy amid the very scenes of want, 
of crime, and wretchedness which he so powerfully described, re- 
tained in all his works something of the elaborate finish and antithesis 
of style which Pope so long caused to prevail in English poetry. 
He has been aptly and wittily styled "Pope in worsted stockings." 
He was born in 1754, at the miserable coast-town of Aldborough, 
in Sufi'olk, and his earlier years were passed amid the squalor of 
extreme poverty, rendered still more oppressive by the gloomy and 
violent character of his father. Virgil had a deep meaning when 
he placed the fiend Want at the portals of the infernal shades where 
his hero was to gain insight into futurity ; Crabbe's long wrestling 
with his fate no doubt gave him that profound knowledge of human 
nature which has filled his works with such solemn lessons of pathos 
and wisdom. The place of his nativity is situated in the ugliest and 
most monotonous scenery of a flat and swampy coast, and the in- 
habitants were in harmony with the nature which surrounded them 
— fishermen, poachers, and smugglers, a savage and demoralized 
race. After receiving an education far superior to what could have 
been expected, young Crabbe made an unsuccessfal attempt to 
establish himself as a country apothecary, and, finding himself on 
the brink of ruin, he took the desperate resolution of journeying up 
to London, where he arrived without a friend, and with three pounds 
and some unfinished manuscripts in his pocket. After battling 
nobly and valiantly and hopefully with all the horrors of disappoint- 
ment, and at the moment when his last hope seemed to have deserted 



CHAP. XVI.] 



crabbe: ms works. 



309 



him, he was lucky enough to attract the notice of Burke, one of the 
wisest, greatest, and most benevolent men who have ever done 
honour to our country. With his assistance he brought out his first 
successful poem, ' The Library/ This was the turn of the tide for 
Crabbe, and fortune soon began to shower upon him rewards for his 
patience and manly fortitude. He found patrons on every side, and 
entered the Church, performing his sacred functions for the first time 
in his native town of Aldborough. In 1783 appeared ' The Vil- 
lage,' a work which at once stamped him as a great original poet. 
The principal charm of this work was its masterly description of 
real nature and actual humble life, and it was mainly composed of 
studies or recollections of the men and scenes that had surrounded 
his infancy. Crabbe saw the fatal defect of all the pastoral poetry 
which had hitherto appeared — its false decorum and feeble distrust 
of nature. His object was to show the poor 

"As truth will paint them, and as bards will noL" 

He trusted to nature, and received immortality as his reward. The 
singular apparent incapability of the society and scenery he took for 
his subject is only an additional proof that Crabbe's principle of art 
was con-ect. He is in poetry what Hogarth is in painting; and if 
both poet and painter have been accused, not without a show of justice, 
of dwelling too exclusively upon what is odious and repulsive in 
reality, and giving a too gloomy and discouraging view of human 
society, this fault is more than redeemed by the admirable instinct 
with which they have penetrated into the heart of man, and shown 
that its strength and weakness, its wisdom and its folly, its majesty 
and its degradation, are alike in all ranks and classes. Crabbe has 
read us deep and terrible lessons of human crime and folly, and his 
lessons are, like Hogarth's, only rendered more impressive and home- 
speaking by the familiar language in which they are conveyed. His 
works are very numerous, and all very much alike in merit, in form, 
in conduct, and in moral. He generally selects some ground or 
framework ofiering him the opportunity for displaying his peculiar 
and admirable talent for minute description of commonplace, ordinary, 
and often even repulsive scenes and persons. On this ground he 
introduces a number of detached or episodic tales, generally of lowly 
and often of the humblest life — sometimes deeply tragic, sometimes 
full of a quaint and subdued humour. Each story is complete in 
itself, and depicts some striking episode of internal and domestic life ; 
they are short but awful extracts from the unread pages of the great 
book of the human heart. The following is a list of Crabbe's 
works : ' The Village ;' ' The Parish Register' (supposed to be an 
account of the most remarkable births, marriages, and deaths occur- 
ring during a year in a country parish); 'The Borough,' a minute 
and masterly delineation of some obscure country town like Aldbo- 



310 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVI. 



rough, with inimitable portraits and biographies of the most remarka- 
ble characters, from the highest to the lowest, which figure on such 
a stage; the 'Tales in Verse,' containing many of his finest speci- 
mens of pathos and character-painting ; and, lastly, * Tales of the 
Hall,' published after a very long interval, during which the poet 
seems to have remained indifferent to the fame he had acquired. 
These consist principally of the narratives of two brothers, who meet 
in old age after a life's separation, and mutually communicate their 
history of early struggles and adventure. All these works are 
written in the rhymed couplet of Pope. Crabbe's humour is very 
dry and quaint, and is sometimes introduced somewhat out of place ; 
but his powers of minute descriptive painting, and his skill in setting 
vividly before us a scene or a character which at first sight we should 
consider hopelessly unattractive, were never equalled in literature. 
Nor is he inferior when delineating either the grander or more fami- 
liar manifestations of external nature : the sea, in storm and calm, 
has perhaps never been so admirably represented in poetry ; and in 
the depicting of the fen, the marsh, the quay, the pauper lodging- 
house, Crabbe has a power as peculiar and as individual. Nor is he 
less great and admirable in his descriptions of moral sufiering — the 
pangs of plebeian guilt, the hopeless sorrow of uncomplaining bereave- 
ment, the wild phantoms of insanity, the punishment of lost inno- 
cence, the unpitied sorrows of poverty, ignorance and neglect. 

It remains to mention two or three remarkable works, written in 
a more lyrical form and measure than those to which we have just 
alluded. The finest of these is ' Sir Eustace Grey,' the story of a 
madman related with tremendous impressiveness by himself ; of a 
similar kind is ' The Hall of Justice ;' and it would be unjust to 
quit Crabbe without saying a word of the admirable and touching 
songs occasionally interspersed among the purely narrative poems. 
Crabbe lived honoured and respected to a great age, and died in 
1832. 

Gi-reat Britain has been inhabited at various epochs by so many 
different races that there still exist an immense number of distinct 
provincial dialects or patois, almost as numerous as the shires into 
which the country is territorially divided. 

None, however, of these numerous dialects have ever been employed 
as a medium of literature ) and though a few of our poets (as Spenser 
in his Pastorals, and Jonson in 'The Sad Shepherd') have made 
timid and ill-assured essays to employ a true rural dialect in poetry, yet 
these essays were so partial in themselves, and must be considered to 
have met with so little success and found so few imitators, that we 
must say that the patois of England properly so called have never 
been dignified by literary employment. It is remarkable that the 
dialect adopted in the above cases was that of the Northern border 
— the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland ; and this dialect 



CHAP. XVI.] 



LOWLAND SCOTS DIALECT. 



311 



approaches very near to the patois of Scotland. But the patois of 
Scotland forms an exception to the remarks we have just made; and 
if the reader keeps in mind the distinction insisted on in the first 
chapter of this little work, he will easily understand how the 
Scottish dialect early acquired and uninterruptedly retained the 
character of a literary tongue. The distinction just alluded to is 
peculiarly important for the foreign student of our literature to keep 
in mind, as a neglect of it will cause the greatest confusion in his 
ideas. He must remember that the Scottish dialect is totally difier- 
ent from the Scottish language. The former (usually called Low- 
land Scots) is essentially and absolutely English, containing, it is 
true, a few words and expressions not to be found in the latter 
speech, some of which have arisen from peculiarities of climate, 
manners, and natural appearances, and some, singularly enough, 
being French. It differs from the English of London chiefly in 
pronunciation, having a broader and more vocalic sound, and pos- 
sessing not only an exquisite naivete of sentiment, arising from the 
rustic and pastoral character of the people, but a much more musical 
and singing intonation, which renders it admirably adapted to be a 
dress for those beautiful and plaintive national airs for which Scot- 
land has ever been so celebrated, and which that country possesses 
in greater number and variety than any nation in the world. 

In fact, the Scottish dialect bears exactly the same relation to 
English as the Doric dialect bore to Attic Greek, and we find conse- 
quently that Scotland, like Sicily, has possessed many a Bion and 
Theocritus. But it must not be supposed that this dialect was a 
mere patois : it was the speech of the fair, the great, the witty, and 
the wise; and as long as Scotland possessed an independent court 
this beautiful and picturesque dialect was used by the noblest and 
the most refined. The union of the two kingdoms has of course 
tended to throw this dialect into disuse among the higher classes of 
Scotland ; but it has been for so many ages sanctified by associations 
of glory, nationality, and patriotism, it has been the vehicle for so 
much of the sweetest and most touching poetry, it is so entwined 
with all the fondest recollections of the people, that it will never 
perhaps descend to the degraded and local position which the com- 
paratively barbarous patois of the English counties have always 
occupied. These were the corruptions of peasant-speech — the 
Scottish dialect was a distinct and highly-cultivated form of lan- 
guage. The Scottish language (spoken only in the Highlands) is 
the Celtic or Gaelic of the ancient Britons, another variety of which 
is still spoken in Wales, and is totally difterent in origin, grammar, 
and sound from English, and quite as unintelligible to the Lowlander 
as it is to the Londoner. Of this we have no occasion to speak. 
The Lowland Scottish dialect possesses a literature of its own — a 
literature as rich, as ancient, as peculiar, and as admirable as can 
26 



312 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVI. 



be boasted bj many cultivated nations. This vigorous tongue bas 
been made the medium for science, for theology, for history, and, 
above all, for poetry of a very high order. In the fourteenth 
century,'' says Campbell, himself a Scot, "Barbour celebrated the 
greatest royal hero of his country (Bruce) in a versified romance 
that is not uninteresting. James I. of Scotland; Henrysone, the 
author of ^ Bobeue and Makyne,' the first known pastoral, and one 
of the best in a dialect rich with the favours of the Pastoral Muse j 
Douglas, the translator of Virgil ; Dunbar, Mersar, and others, gave 
a poetical lustre to Scotland in the fifteenth century, and filled up a 
space in the annals of British poetry, after the date of Cbaucer and 
Lydgate, that is otherwise nearly barren.'^ Dunbar, indeed, is an 
imaginative poet of a very high order, and his ^ Dance of the Seven 
Deadly Sins in Hell' is an allegory of astonishing vigour and terrific 
sublimity — at once Dantesque and Spenserian. As a satirist and 
painter of comic character Sir David Lyndsay is a writer of whom 
any nation might well be proud; and Scotland can trace an un- 
interrupted succession of truly admirable poets, comic, descriptive, 
pathetic, or narrative, of a merit well worthy of those admirable 
ballads which are inseparably associated with all that is gayest, 
tenderest, and most humorous in sentiment, married to the sweetest 
music in the world. 

One of the most remarkable and truly national Scottish poets is 
Allan Kamsay, whose 'Gentle Shepherd' is perhaps the only 
modern pastoral which can be compared to the exquisite creations of 
Theocritus. It is the first successful solution of, that difficult 
problem, to represent rustic manners as they really are, and at the 
same time so as to make them attractive and graceful. The diffi- 
culty of the task will best be appreciated by reflecting on the innu- 
merable failures, from Virgil down to Shenstone, which crowd the 
annals of literature. But the rustic pictures of Allan Bamsay 
breathe the freshness of real country life — they have an atmosphere 
of nature, the breezy freshness of the fields : he has revived the 
magic of Theocritus, and given us a glimpse into the interior life of 
the real shepherds, with their artless vigour and unsophisticated feel- 
ings. The immense popularity of this poem among the people 
whose manners it describes (for no other readers could generally 
either understand its language or appreciate its delicate and local 
allusions) as well as the existence of a vast body of very beautiful 
songs, would diminish our surprise that Scotland should have pro- 
duced a number of poets who devoted to the vernacular literature 
of their country powers of genius which would have made them 
immortal on a larger theatre than the one which they selected. The 
greatest of these was undoubtedly Robert Burns, the glory of his 
country, and one of the innumerable instances, in which Britain has 
been so prolific, of genius springing to immortality from the hum- 



CHAP. XVI.] 



BURNS. 



313 



blest origin. He was born in 1758, and passed tbe earlier part of 
his life in struggling (though with little success) against the toils 
and distresses of a peasant's life. Having been reduced by mis- 
fortunes in his humble career as a farmer, and also in some degree 
by indulgence in the passions accompanying so excitable and poetical 
a temperament, to the verge of ruin, he was upon the point of 
quitting his country in despair and emigrating to the West Indies, ' 
when the unequalled pathos, splendour, and originality of some of 
his lyrics struck many influential members of cultivated society, and 
the poet was induced to remain in Scotland. He now went to 
Edinburgh, where he reigned for some time the undisputed lion, the 
wonder of that literary capital. His conversation was as brilliant 
as his genius was pathetic and sublime, but, unfortunately for him- 
self, the poet could not resist the fascinations of social indulgence, 
and the intoxication of universal applause. He retired again to the 
country, and, after fruitlessly struggling for some time as an agri- 
culturist, he was obliged, in order to obtain bread for his family, to 
accept an humble situation in the office of Excise. This employ- 
ment, so unfavourable both to habits of temperance and to literary 
occupation, only tended to precipitate the setting of this bright and 
comet-like intelligence : his constitution, worn out with excesses, 
passions, and anxieties, was completely broken up, and he died 
in 1796. 

His works are singularly various and splendid ; the greater part of 
them consists of songs, either completely original, or recastings of 
such compositions of older date : in performing this difficult task of 
altering and improving existing lyrics, in which a beautiful thought 
was often buried under a load of mean and vulgar expression. Burns 
exhibits a most exquisite delicacy and purity of taste, and an admi- 
rable ear for harmony. His own songs vary in tone and subject 
through every changing mood, from the sternest patriotism and the 
most agonising pathos to the broadest drollery : in all he is equally 
inimitable. Most of his finest works are written in his own Lowland 
dialect, and give a picture, at once familiar and ideal, of the feelings 
and sentiments of the peasant. It is the rustic heart, but glorified 
by passion, and elevated by a perpetual communing with nature. 
But he has also exhibited perfect mastery when writing pure English, 
and many admirable productions might be cited in which he has 
clothed the loveliest thoughts in the purest language. Consequently 
his genius was not obliged to depend upon the adventitious charm 
and prestige of a provincial dialect. There never perhaps existed a 
mind more truly and intensely poetical than that of Burns. In his 
verses to a Mountain Daisy, which he turned up with his plough — 
in his reflections on destroying, in the same way, the nest of a field- 
mouse, there is a vein of tenderness which no poet has ever surpassed. 
In the beautiful little poem ' To Mary in Heaven,' and in many 



314 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVI. 



other short lyrics, he has condensed the whole history of love, its 
tender fears, its joys, its frenzy, its agonies, and its yet sublimer 
resignation, into the space of a dozen lines. No poet ever seems so 
sure of himself ; none goes more directly and more certainly to the 
point; none is more muscular in his expression, encumbering the 
thought with no useless drapery of words, and trusting always for 
eflfect to nature, truth, and intensity of feeling. Consequently no 
poet more abounds in those short and picturelike phrases which at 
once present the object almost to our senses, and which no reflection 
could either imitate or improve. What can be more wonderfully 
condensed than his picture of a patriot warrior — 
"Pressing forward red-wat-shod^' ? 

it is absolutely Shakspearian. 

But the religion in which Burns is — not perhaps the most supreraej 
but the most alone, is that of familiar humour, mingled with a kind 
of sly and quaint tenderness. Scottish external nature is in his 
poems represented in its every phase, in its every shade of variation 5 
but he is yet more admirable when he delineates the interior life of 
his own thoughtful and moral countrymen. There have never been 
traced by the hand of man such full, such tender, such living pic- 
ture of rustic life as Burns has left us. The half-serious half- 
humorous tale of 'Tarn o'Shanter,' with its fantastically terrific 
diablerie, the satiric gaiety of ^ Holy Fair,' the ' Scotch Drink,' the 
' Elegy on Matthew Henderson,' the ^Address to the De'il,' all bear 
witness to the wonderful diversity of his powers, to his deep sympathy 
with all that is noble and touching in rustic life, and to his intensely 
national vein of mingled tenderness and humour. The true poet is 
he who finds the most of beauty and of dignity in the universal 
feelings and interests of human life : and increased wisdom and 
sympathy (the infallible attendant on increased^ wisdom) is rapidly 
tending to make all mankind echo the exclamation of Burns when 
he wept at the sight of a lovely and peasant-peopled scene : " The 
sight,'' he said, "of so many smoking cottages gave a pleasure to his 
mind, which none could understand who had not witnessed, like him- 
self, the happiness and the worth which they contained." One of 
his most admirable poems, ' The Cotter's Saturday Night,' is nothing 
but an amplification of this profound and beautiful sentiment 



CHAP. XVII.] 



WALTER SCOTT. 



815 



CHAPTER XVII. 

SCOTT AND SOUTHEY. 

Walter Scott — The Lay of the Last Minstrel — Marmion — Lady of the Lake 
— Lord of the Isles — Waverley — Guy Mannering — Antiquary — Tales of my 
Landlord — Ivanhoe — Monastery and Abbot — Kenilvvorth — Pirate — Fortunes 
of Nigel — Peveril — Quentin Durward — St. Ronan's Well — Redgauntlet — 
Tales of the Crusaders — Woodstock — Chronicles of the Canongate — Anne 
of Geierstein. Robert Southey — Thalaba and Kehama — Madoc — Legendary 
Tales — Roderick — Prose Works and Miscellanies. 

There is no author in the whole range of literature, ancient or 
modern, whose works exhibit so perfect an embodiment of united 
power and activity as is to be found in Walter Scott. He is as 
prolific as Lope de Vega, as absolutely original as Homer. He was 
descended from one of the most powerful and ancient houses of 
Scotland ; and though his father (a writer to the signet in Edinburgh) 
was rather an active and intelligent lawyer than a representative of 
Middle Age nobility, yet the spirit of clanship which still so strongly 
pervades Scottish society was enough to unite the poet in sentiment 
as in blood to the great and powerful family of Buccleugh. Having 
received in his childhood a slight injury, which rendered him during 
his whole life a little lame, though it did not ultimately affect the 
strength of a robust and athletic body, he passed some of his earliest 
years among the romantic scenery of his own beautiful country — ■ 
scenery where every spot had been the theatre of warlike or necro- 
mantic tradition. Scott afterwards passed through a regular course 
of education, first at the High School and afterwards at the University 
of Edinburgh, where he appears, without distinguishing himself by 
any extraordinary triumphs, to have acquired the good opinion of 
his teachers, and to have become very popular among his comrades, 
partly by his stores of old legends, and not less by his frank, bold, 
and adventurous character. It is not easy to conceive a finer speci- 
men of humanity than Scott. His frame was vigorous and manly, 
even surpassing the ordinary size and strength ; his features, though 
not classically regular, were animated and attractive ; and his charac- 
ter was an admirable union of imagination, of good sense, and of 
good nature. Power, in short, and goodness were stamped upon the 
man, both within and without. On completing his education he 
became a member of the Scottish bar, and was ultimately appointed, 
through the recommendation of the head of his clan, the Duke of 
Buccleugh, sheriff of Selkirk^ to which appointment were afterwards 
26* 



316 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVIL 



added one or two others. As a lawyer his success, though not extra- 
ordinary, was respectable. The society of Edinburgh was at that 
time unusually rich in men of literary and philosophical accomplish- 
ments, and it was, moreover, enlivened and diversified by many 
relics of the political struggles of the ^45 — old Jacobite gentlemen, 
whose manners supplied the future novelist with many of his most 
admirable characters, and whose adventures furnished him with many 
a wild tale of bravery, persecution, and escape — the traditions of a 
romantic age which was rapidly passing away. 

Henry Mackenzie, the author of 'The Man of Feeling,^ and one 
of the ornaments of Edinburgh literary society, had introduced into 
Scotland a taste for the ballad-poetry of Germany. It was from the 
study and admiration of Burger and the minor lyrists that the 
English began to turn their attention to the Teutonic muse ; and 
Scott translated the 'Lenore' and other small compositions, chiefly 
of that wild and spectral character which might have been expected 
to possess so much novelty for the British public. These transla- 
tions, some of them executed with great spirit and fidelity (as for 
example the version of Groethe's 'Erl Konig'), were contributed by 
Scott to Lewis's 'Tales of Terror,^ the first attempt to give speci- 
mens of German literature in England. After having, by the 
exercise of reason and good sense, recovered from an early love- 
sorrow, Scott married a young lady of the name of Carpenter, who 
was possessed of a small fortune, and retired to a cottage, where, in 
the very flower of his youth and surrounded by domestic happiness, 
he prepared for future glory by steady and uninterrupted labour. 

From very early youth he had exhibited a most intense passion 
for the ballad-poetry in which his own country is even richer than 
England itself ; and we know that in childhood his imagination had 
been lighted up by the repeated perusal of Percy's ' Reliques of 
Ancient English Poetry' — that admirable collection which was not 
only the germ of the great romantic revolution in literature, but 
which has perhaps tended more than any book since Homer to 
inspire the youthful writer with a passion for natural unsophisticated 
sentiment and vivid description. After translating 'Goetz von Ber- 
lichingen,' Scott travelled over the Border district, collecting new 
stores of ballads from old peasants and wandering rhapsodists, and 
thus rescuing from oblivion some of the finest pictures of simple 
pathos and heroism, and many curious documents of the history of 
that interesting region : these were published in three volumes, 
entitled the 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.' Nothing could 
be better calculated as a preparation for the future triumphs of the 
romantic poet and novelist of Scotland than this task of love ; and 
the necessary antiquarian reading and investigation must have 
supplied him with an immense store of the materials he so well 
knew how to use. He afterwards published another work of a 



CHAP. XVn.] SCOTT : LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL. 



317 



similar nature — a commentary on the singular poetical fragments 
attributed to Thomas of Erceldouue, said to have lived in the thir- 
teenth century. 

The first of that long and splendid line of poems -whose glory 
was only to be effaced by the intenser splendour of his novels, was 
*The Lay of the Last Minstrel/ published in 1805, and received by 
the public with rapturous delight. In its plan, its versification, in 
the whole design and execution, this was a new and perfectly original 
production ; the reader was presented with a picture, fresh, vigorous, 
vast, and brilliant as Nature herself. It is a tale of sorcery and 
chivalric adventure, as vivid and bright as a real poem of the Middle 
Ages, as faithful, as minute, as picturesque in its details yet at the 
same time imbued with the finer sensibility of modern literature, 
and adorned with all the splendours of modern art. The tale is 
supposed to be related by a wandering minstrel, the last of a pro- 
fession once so honoured; and the framing of the legend is at once 
exquisitely beautiful in itself, and admirably calculated to set off 
and relieve the narrative. The description of the aged and wander- 
ing minstrel, — the diffidence with which he begins his legend in the 
presence of the great lady, and tries to recall the inspiration of 
vanished days, — and the glorious bursts of truly Homeric fire when 
be gets into the full tide of minstrel inspiration, — all this is as fine 
as it is original in conception. Each canto is appropriately and art- 
fully introduced with some passage of description or reflection ; and 
these introductions are among the most exquisite specimens of Scott's 
picturesque and enchanting style. The tale itself is not very well 
constructed, and, though many of the supernatural events are im- 
pressive, the character of the Goblin Dwarf is unnecessary to the 
plot, and generally felt to be a blemish. The detached scenes — 
solemn, exciting, or gorgeous — are the real strength of the poem. 
The night-journey of Deloraine (an admirable embodiment of the 
rude mosstrooping borderer) to fulfil the command of the Lady of 
Branksome; the description of Melrose Abbey by moonlight; the 
scene of the opening of the tomb of Michael Scott, and the taking 
of the book of gramarie from the dead hand of the mighty wizard ; 
the description of Lord Howard, — all these are absolutely unequalled 
iu their particular manner. Most authors who have attempted to 
evoke the shades of buried ages raise them before our eyes, as 
Samuel was raised by the witch of Endor, rather like shadows than 
with the consistency of reality. Scott revivifies them; and, what 
is a still greater triumph of art, he puts the spectator into the condi- 
tion of a contemporary: we not only see the things, but we see tbem 
as through the eyes of the Middle Ages. The versification of this 
poem, and of most of its successors, consists principally of the 
rhymed octosyllabic couplet, founded on the favourite measure of 
the Norman Trouveres. This measure, peculiarly well adapted to 



818 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVII. 



lively narrative, Scott varies, ia passages expressive of passion or 
more violent movement, with an occasional short Adionic verse inter- 
posed at irregular intervals among the octosyllabic lines, which in the 
latter circumstances rhyme together, not uniformly in pairs, but often 
in threes or fours. This kind of verse he wields with consummate 
ease ; and though he seems always to have written with extraordinary 
rapidity, and to have been nowise assiduous to polish or correct, yet 
so exquisite was his ear, that there are few poets whose versification 
is more varied and flowing, or more infallibly echoes the feeling and 
sentiment of the moment. 

Scott had now fairly begun that wonderful career which produced 
more of beautiful and wise, and in a more astounding variety, than 
perhaps the whole history of literature can parallel. His activity 
was inexhaustible, and he was perhaps more accurately, extensively, 
and minutely versed in the details of Middle Age art, letters, and 
social life, than any man of genius who ever existed. In 1808 
appeared ' Marmion,' a tale somewhat similar in its scenery and 
treatment to the 'Lay,' concluding with the fatal field of Flodden. 
The hero is an English knight, valiant and wise, but profligate and 
unscrupulous ; and his adventures, which principally take place in 
Scotland, give the poet many opportunities for his inimitable painting 
of natural scenery, of chivalrous life, and of interesting historic 
personages, in particular of King James VI. Marmion himself is 
finely conceived, but the expedient of bringing about the catastrophe 
by representing such a character, however wicked, as forging docu- 
ments, is a fatal blemish to the probability of the intrigue in such 
an age and country. But this defect of costume is amply, gloriously 
redeemed by the splendour, fire, energy, and livingness with which 
brilliant and varied scenes succeed each other in this magnificent 
evocation of chivalrous days. The voyage of the nuns is one of the 
very finest pictures even in Scott's vast gallery : the reader is carried 
bounding on like the bark ; the verses breathe the very freshness of 
the sea. In the scene describing the immuring of Constance before 
the grim tribunal in the vaults of Lindisfarn Abbey, Scott has 
ventured into the lofty regions of terror and pity ; and how wonder- 
fully is this awful episode contrasted with the exquisite grace of the 
Scottish court, when the fair Lady Heron sings the ballad of Lochin- 
var ! The battle-scene with which this poem concludes is indeed; to 
use the words of Shakspeare, — 

" A fearful battle reuder'd you in music." 
The majestic pomp of preparation, the breathless pause, the roaring 
onset, the struggle, the carnage, — all is there : the reader feels his 
teeth setting, his breath held in, his blood rushing backward to the 
heart : it is as real as anything in the Iliad ; and the wail of lamenta- 
tion and defeat, and the death of the conscience-haunted Marmion, 



CHAP. XYII.] 



SCOTT : POEMS. 



319 



form a most admirable and appropriate conclusion to that woful 
day 

"Of Flodden's fatal field, 
Where shiver'd was fair Scotland's spear, 
And broken was her shield." 

Two years after this noble work, was produced 'The Lady of the 
Lake,' perhaps the completest and finest poetical conception of this 
astonishing genius. In this poem the scene is transferred to a region 
still more new to English readers, and more picturesque in itself : the 
country surrounding the beautiful Loch Katrine, and situated on the 
borders between the civilised Lowlands and the mountains inhabited 
by the Celtic tribes, is the theatre of the action, and the feuds 
between the two races (ever at enmity) its principal material. The 
intrigue, though simple enough, is artful and interesting ; it consists 
partly of the adventures of King James, who has lost his way in 
the chase, and is received with hospitality in the secret retreat of his 
former favourite, Douglas, now banished and disgraced ; and partly 
of his knight-errant-like encounter (in disguise) with Roderick Dhu, 
the formidable chief of a Highland clan which has long defied the 
power of the Lowland monarch. Roderick, the stern and haughty 
chieftain ; Ellen, the daughter of the Douglas line, yet graceful and 
simple as peasant maiden ; old Allan Bane, the harper ; Douglas, 
with his proud heart swelling under the remembrance of his king's 
ingratitude, — what noble types of character, and how freely and 
unafiectedly do they move before us ! Certainly nothing can be 
finer than the approach of Roderick along the lake, the duel between 
him and Eitz-James, or the death of the captive Highland chieftain. 
Scott appears to have been conscious of his peculiar power of describ- 
ing battles, for he makes the harper relate to Roderick in prison the 
combat between the captive's clan and the troops of King James, 
and perhaps even the noble and stirring description of Flodden does 
not surpass the battle of Bealan Duine in ' The Lady of the Lake,' 
and the death of Roderick, in the mid swing and fury of the 
minstrel's rhapsody, is nobly and touchingly conceived. It would 
be unjust to speak of the exquisite descriptions of scenery, both 
lovely and sublime, with which this poem (particularly its earlier 
portion) is crowded, without mentioning also, and with equal praise, 
the charming glimpses into private life which the poet takes as he 
goes along, and the splendid descriptions of customs, superstitions, 
&c., which form the subordinate decorations of the work. Few 
things are more truly pathetic than the little episode of the poor 
maniac, Blanche of Devon, more impressive than the scene of the 
Fiery Cross, more exciting than the narrative of the rapid flight of 
that ensign of war and blood to summon the clansmen to the trysting- 
place. 

After this, perhaps his greatest poetical triumph, Scott somewhat 



820 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVII. 



changed the direction and form of bis productions : his next work, 
which appeared in 1811, was ' The Vision of Don Roderick/ founded 
upon a striking legend which relates that Roderick, the last Gothic 
King of Spain, persisted, in spite of all dissuasion, in descending 
into a subterranean vault beneath the cathedral of Toledo, where he 
saw, prefigured in a kind of phantasmagoria, the invasion of the 
Moors, and all the ills which his own unbridled passions were to 
inflict upon his house and kingdom. Scott has somewhat enlarged 
this impressive groundwork, and made to pass before the eyes of the 
impious monarch, not only the irraption of the Moorish conquerors, 
but also the dreadful cruelties and oppressions of the armies of 
Napoleon. It is written in the Spenserian stanza, and with some- 
thing of the Spenserian richness and cumbrous profusion of orna- 
ment and allegory; and it would seem that in quitting the trouvere 
metre, which he wielded so nobly, Scott had lost much of his peculiar 
nerve and fire. 

Two years after this not very successful effort in a new line, Scott 
returned to his old one, and published ^ Rokeby,' and ^ The Bridal 
of Triermain,' which appeared within a single twelvemonth. In the 
former of these poems he most injudiciously selected a period too 
modern, and in general there is perceptible in this work a faintness 
and uncertainty of hand which is not altogether redeemed by a few 
beautiful passages. In the other work a short adventure, taken 
from the old books of chivalry, is related with much grace and 
vigour, but the enchanted castle is too dreamy and unsubstantial to 
interest us like 'Marmion, or 'The Lady of the Lake/ and our 
feeling of probability is outraged by the way in which the magical 
and fabulous is brought in contact with the action of a real knight. 
The purely fabulous part, describing the amour of King Arthur 
with the fairy lady, the reappearance of their daughter at the tourna- 
ment of Carleon, the tourney itself, and the enchanted slumber of 
the maiden in the castle of the Valley of St. John — all this is in 
the finest vein of Romanz poetry. Nor is the description of the 
watching of the knight unworthy of our chivalric Homer, but the 
adventures which break the speJl of this "sleeping beauty'^ seem 
to us not in the finest vein of Middle Age conception. They are 
rather like the chivalry of a ballet than a page from the Morte 
Jlrtus. 

In 1814 appeared 'The Lord of the Isles,' a romantic narrative, 
in which the principal personage is the heroic Robert Bruce, some of 
whose almost incredible adventures Scott has skilfully and pictu- 
resquely recalled. The action is chiefly carried on amid the savage 
and desolate scenery of the Western Isles, particularly in the castle 
of Artornish, and afterwards amid the still bleaker and more tre- 
mendous deserts of Grailoway. The catastrophe is the great battle 
of Bannockburn, and the poet's patriotism has fired the description 



CHAP. XVII.] 



SCOTT: POEMS. 



321 



of this event, so glorious in the reminiscences of every Scot, with a 
glow and cBstrum which recalls the concluding stanzas of 'Marniion/ 
But the story is rather entangled, and the march of the events is 
sometimes languishing and sometimes precipitate. 

We have but two more poems to mention, ' The Field of Water- 
loo,' and ' Harold the Dauntless,' of which the former appeared in 
1815, and its companion in the following year. 'Waterloo' was 
written while the impressions of a recent visit to that battle-field 
were still fresh in the poet's mind; but the work (which is for- 
tunately short) is entirely unworthy of the author's genius and glory. 
In ' Harold the Dauntless' we have the story of a wild and savage 
Berserkir, who is recalled by love from his fierce idolatry to civiliza- 
tion and Christianity. The principal character is not ill conceived, 
but .the adjuncts and general character of the poem are rather chival- 
ric than Scandinavian; and though some of the events are in 
character with the wild legends of the Norwegian Sagas, yet the 
effect of the whole is not in harmony with the design. 

Even so early as 1805, at the period when ' The Lay of the Last 
Minstrel' burst, like a new avatar of the beauty and power of 
mediaeval art, upon the public of Great Britain, Scott had com- 
menced a prose tale embodying some of the striking scenes connected 
with that romantic event of Scottish history, the gallant but disas- 
trous expedition of Prince Charles Edward, i. e. the unsuccessful 
attempt of the Jacobites to replace upon the British throne the 
house of Stuart. This event (commonly called the Rebellion of the 
'45) involved a very great number of the most ancient houses of 
Scotland, and it should be remembered that that country was 
markedly inclined to prefer the party of the Stuarts to that of the 
succession of the house of Brunswick. This period of strong pas- 
sions and vehement contrasts of political feeling was of course 
fertile in originality of character, singular traits of courage, and 
surprising vicissitudes of fortune, and Scott was personally acquaint- 
ed with a multitude of "old '45 men," as they were called, whose 
adventures he was very fond of relating, and whose feelings he has 
immortalized in so many of his admirable fictions. The first sketch 
of this novel was abandoned after a few chapters only had been 
composed, and the sheets were put away in an old writing-desk with 
a quantity of fishing-tackle, and almost totally forgotten by the 
author. On the appearance, in 1813, of 'Rokeby,' and 'The Bridal 
of Triermain,' poems which were considered by the public as mani- 
festly inferior to his preceding compositions, Scott's admirable 
common sense suggested to him that his peculiar poetical vein of 
chivalrous fiction was now almost exhausted, and that there was 
little hope that he could, by continuing before the public in the same 
strain of Middle Age revival, vie with the already dazzling poetical 
reputation of Byron, which had as it were taken England by storm. 



322 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVII. 



He turned his thoughts to prose; and, drawing the unfinished MS. 
of which we have spoken from its inglorious repose in the writing- 
desk, he completed the tale, and it appeared in 1814, the same year 
as 'The Lord of the Isles,' under the title of ^Waverley, or 'Tis 
Sixty Years since.' This was the first of that illustrious series of 
prose fictions which have placed Scott, it is hardly too much to say, 
almost upon a level with Shakspeare. The novel was published 
anonymously, and the public instantly perceived that a new era in 
the history of fiction had begun. The plot is exceedingly simple, 
and not remarkable for any great ingenuity; but the absolute 
novelty of the scenery, the immense number, richness, and variety 
of the characters, the brief, picturelike, and inimitable sketches of 
natural beauty, and the freedom, freshness, and naturalness of the 
situations, comic as well as elevated, soon excited an universal 
rapture of admiration. 

The tone in Scott, like that of Shakspeare, is always an essentially 
noble and elevated one — elevated and elevating. All objects are 
shown, as it were, through a fresh and sunny atmosphere : all is in 
its true colour, proportion, and perspective, but glorified by a genial 
glow of goodness and humanity. Many of the characters of 
^ Waverley' are masterpieces : the brave, gallant, but pedantic old 
Baron Bradwardine is equally delightful amid the feudal splendours 
of his ancestral bears, and scribbling his texts of Livy on the walls 
of his cave. What noble figures are those of the haughty Vich Ian 
Yohr and his high-souled sister; how full of life and movement the 
camp of the insurgents ; how pathetic the trial of the rebels ; how 
exquisite the thousand minor characters which crowd these living- 
pages — the fantastic "innocent" Davie G-ellatlie, with his snatches 
of song, as pathetic as the ballads of Ophelia herself — the pig-headed 
Balmawhapple — the faithful Micklewham and Galium Beg ! Scott 
had the true Shakspearian quality of going out of himself to create 
— of throwing his own mind so completely into the subject immedi- 
ately before him, that the creator seems successively to be absolutely 
identified with all his creations. 

The universal enthusiasm which greeted the appearance of 
^ Waverley' had hardly time to subside into calm admiration when 
^Guy Mannering' was published (in 1815, the next year). This 
novel exhibits a still wider range of power than the preceding one. 
It did not rely upon the prestige which attaches to a romantic episode 
in history, and to the interest derivable from the introduction of 
historical personages and adventures so interesting in themselves as 
those connected with the '45. In ' Gruy Mannering' we enter upon 
a new and more domestic sphere, the family of a simple Scottish 
country gentleman, and we find ourselves in the midst of characters, 
common and every-day enough in their definition, but admirably 
brought out and contrasted. Scott's personal experience and his 



CBJlP. XVII.] GUY MAXXERIXG — ANTIQUARY. 



323 



legal recollections probably supplied him with nearly all the types 
of common and low life which he has so admirably individaalized in 
this enchanting story: but with what consummate tact has he avoided 
the tone of exaggeration and romance which their employment 
would be very apt to inspire h If the highest manifestation of crea"^ 
tive genius be the power of inventing scenes and persons which are 
at once surprising and natural, strongly individual in themselves, 
yet in perfect accordance with the types of reality, then it is impos- 
sible to deny Scott the honours due to the highest creative genius^ i 
Horace says emphatically, " difficile est proprie coinmunia dicere y' 
and his remark, extended in its application so as to embrace the 
inventive as well as the expressive in art, is a formula of criticism 
of great value. The union of the abstract and the concrete is the 
highest triumph of art. It was the boast of Apelles that he used 
only four primitive colours in his pictures, and the history of all 
literatui'e proves that the greatest triumphs of genius have ever been 
attained by the use of- the simplest elements of external or moral 
existence. It is the mere vibration of a stretched chord that speaks 
the unutterable language of music ; and it is from the skilful contrast 
and genial study of most ordinary human characters that Scott has 
read us his noblest lessons of wisdom and of love. Dominie Samp- 
son is one of those admirable hits of conception which enter, at 
once and for ever, like Shakspeare's characters, into the sphere of 
reality. We think of him not as a creation of genius, but as a man ; 
we involuntarily place him in our thoughts beside Uncle Toby, 
Parson Adams, and Lear's Fool. Nor are the minor elements less 
admirable : the two young ladies (the most difficult of all characters 
to render interesting) are delicately and charmingly contrasted ; 
Pleydell (supposed to be a sketch from nature), Henry Bertram, the 
scoundrel Glossin, Mac 3Iorlan, — all, down to honest Jock J abez 
the postilion, are living, natural, unforced, unaffected. In this 
romance the events which bring about the ruin of the rascally 
Glossin, and restore Bertram to the inheritance of his ancestors, are 
at once natural and surprising : the funeral of the old Laird, and 
the sale of his estate; Henry Bertram's wanderings in the wastes of 
the Northern Border; that breathless episode where ho is concealed 
by the gipsy in the ruined hut of Derncleugh ; the visit of Manner- 
ing to Edinburgh, and the legal saturnalia of High Jinks ; the 
funeral of the old maid, and the inimitable scene of the opening of 
her will ; and, above all, every passage in which Dinmont makes his 
appearance, — we may boldly say that all these scenes, and a thousand 
others, are set before us with astonishing freedom, ease, and power. 

In 1816 appeared 'The Antiquary,' which gives us a new and 
not less interesting glimpse into the interior life of the Scottish 
people, and gives another proof of the all-embracing and inexhausti- 
ble character of the great man's genius. The chief personage in 



324 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. Xyil. 



this novel, the Antiquary himself, is a truly genial creation — as 
complete and as individual as Jaques or FalstafiF; and the book 
abounds, even more wonderfully perhaps than Scott's other works, 
with perfect and happy strokes of human character : we need only 
mention the worthy but weak Sir Arthur, Miss Grizel Oldbuck, 
Hector Mclntyre, the warlike Baillie, and, above all, Edie Ochil- 
tree. The passage describing the party caught by the rising tide at 
the foot of the cliffs is perhaps unequalled; and the mixture here, 
as well as in others of Scott's works, of familiar and even ludicrous 
incidents with the most powerful and terrific emotions, is another 
strong element of the writer's power. In our remarks upon Shak- 
speare we observed that his mingling of trivial and agitating ideas 
is one of the peculiar conditions of the very highest power of 
genius. 

In the same year with this exquisite work appeared the first series 
of ' The Tales of My Landlord,' containing the ' Black Dwarf and 
^Old Mortality;' the first of which was much shorter and less 
powerful than its companion. These tales were preceded by a kind 
of fictitious introduction, attributing their authorship to Peter 
Pattieson, an usher in a village school — an expedient (adopted to 
mislead the public as to these tales being the composition of the 
now illustrious "Author of Waverley," for which purpose also a 
new publisher was selected) neither very happy in itself nor very 
felicitously executed. The presiding genius — the Deus ex machind 
— of 'The Black Dwarf (the deformed misanthrope who gives 
name to the tale) is one of those irregularities of nature which 
inspire rather pity than interest; and though — as in this instance, 
Elshie the Recluse being drawn from a real personage — of occasional 
occurrence in the actual world, are yet too rare, and too repulsive 
consequently, to form a proper foundation for a plot of real life. 
Scott's genius had no need of dwarfs and monsters to set agoing the 
wheels of his intrigue : these are the resources of inferior inventors. 
Elliott and his family, and the wolfish mosstrooper, . Willie of the 
Westburnflat — the two poles, so to say, of border character — are 
contrasted with consummate skill. 

The companion-novel to 'The Black Dwarf was 'Old Mortality,' 
a fiction of much higher pretensions, greater length, and completer 
historical interest : indeed this is one of the very finest fictions that 
the world has ever seen. It describes the adventures of the Scottish 
Covenanters from the skirmish of Drumclog to the great battle, so 
fatal to their cause, of Both well Brigg. The tale opens just after 
the murder of Archbishop Sharpe, and the hero of the intrigue, a 
young gentleman who is led, by conviction no less than by family 
sympathies, to embrace the cause of the insurrection, is naturally 
and easily brought in contact with the most remarkable men of 
both parties^ and is involved in the full vortex of events. Thus we 



CHAP. XVII.] OLD MORTALITY ROB ROY. 



have splendid sketches of the famous Claverhouse, of G-eneral 
Dalziel, and other celebrated royalists, and on the other hand a most 
admirable picture of the fierce, persecuted, and fanatical Covenant- 
ers. There has perhaps seldom been a finer example of the difficult 
feat of mingling in one delineation real and fictitious things and 
events. Claverhouse, for example, is as individual, and yet as ideal, 
as Talbot, or Wolsey, or Henry V., in the historical plays of our 
divine dramaturge. 

Of the purely invented characters in this grand creation it is im- 
possible to speak in too high terms; nor of their variety, nor of 
their truth, nor of the wonderful power with which the author has 
harmonized them with the solider personages borrowed from history. 
To the reader, indeed, they appear to have no less consistence, and 
he cannot refrain from associating them with the authentic events 
when he afterwards reflects upon the annals of the times. The 
Lady of Tillietudlem, Mause Headrigg and her son Cuddy, the old 
Major and his veteran servant Pyke, the mean and griping Miln- 
wood, Serjeant Both well, the kind but grumbling housekeeper — all 
these are almost real existences, as real as the loftier conceptions of 
the covenanting preachers and their wild followers : Muckle wrath, 
and the fierce and crafty Burley, advancing gradually from fanati- 
cism to crime, and from crime to religious frenzy. There is also a 
very deep knowledge of the human heart in the manner in which 
the character of Morton, the hero, is gradually modified by the 
stern and agitating scenes which he passes through ; and the touches 
of simple pathos, the exquisite scenes of rustic gaiety, and the innu- 
merable nooks of tranquil domestic life or lovely rural nature into 
which we glance, as it were, while borne onward by the interest of 
the story — all these form a picture which has the vastness, the 
minuteness, the distinctness, and the splendour of life itself. 

In 1818 was published the second series of the ' Tales of My 
Landlord,' comprising ^Hob Boy' and 'The Heart of Midlothian.' 
In 'Bob Boy' Scott has again ventured, and more boldly, into a 
region which he had visited with such success in ' The Lady of the 
Lake' and in one portion of 'Waverley.' The Highlands form the 
theatre of action, and the exploits of the famous freebooter who 
gives name to the work the most prominent materials of this fiction. 
These scenes and manners, then quite new to the English reader, 
and which even an inferior talent could hardly render uninteresting, 
are admirably diversified, and connected with characters and events 
of a much more familiar kind. The sketch of a London merchant 
in Mr. Osbaldistone, with which the tale commences, is very finely 
conceived, and no less so the charming character of Owen, the 
faithful clerk. The scene soon changes to the North of England, 
where the family of a rude fox-hunting squire is exquisitely con- 



326 



OUTLINES OF CxENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVII. 



trasted with that most delicate and lovely of all Scott's creations, 
the beautiful Di Yernon. 

Nor can any thing he finer than the Highland scenes and charac- 
ters which fill the greater part of this book : how romantic and yet 
how real is Rob Roy himself; with what an atmosphere of wild 
energy is the far-famed freebooter — the Robin Hood of Scotland — 
surrounded ; and yet how skilfully has the author, by intermingling 
perpetual details of familiar life and common feeling, brought him, 
as it were, near to us, giving him flesh and blood, and substituting 
the genial air of everyday humanity for that misty and unsubstantial 
grandeur which an inferior author would have left around it ! Helen 
Macgregor is a conception of a very high order of art, and the scene 
of the defeat of the English detachment and the horrible punish- 
ment of the wretched Morris is intensely exciting. The comic 
incidents, too, mingled hero as everywhere in Scott's more tre- 
mendous and impressive scenes, only add to the effect, and give a 
more intense reality to the narrative. Constructively speaking, the 
chief defect of Scott's romances arises from the hurried manner in 
which he winds up his narratives. He probably always (as indeed 
he has told us himself) laid down, when commencing one of his 
fictions, a plan or ground-plot of the whole intrigue; but the inten- 
sity with which the scenes presented themselves to his glorious 
imagination, and the delight (which to such a mind must have been, 
and was, unspeakable) of tracing through every ramification such a 
character as Dalgetty, for instance, or Baillie Nicol Jarvie, or Monk- 
barns, or Bradwardine, or Dominie Sampson, soon carried him from 
the outline he had fixed upon, and forced him, at the risk of writing 
not a novel but a library, to hurry hastily over the conclusion. To 
a conception like his, joined with so intense and wonderful a percep- 
tive faculty, the delineation of such personages must have given the 
double delight of the inventor and the historian. What he abso- 
lutely created as ideal, he must have anatomised as real. 

In 'The Heart of Midlothian' we have a narrative of humble — 
nay, the humblest — peasant life of Scotland. We have here the 
joys and woes, the weaknesses and the heroism of the poor; de- 
scribed with no affected raptures of sentimentalism, with no unreal 
views of life, neither siippressio veri nor sugge silo falsi — a simple 
tale of obscure sorrow and unadorned heroism, connected with pic- 
tures of society as vast and varied as they are accurate and lively. 
The Edinburgh riot with which the tale opens is described with a 
power that even this picturesque author has never surpassed ; and 
the frightful and agitating scenes of popular vengeance are most 
skilfully made to give way to the calm repose of rustic existence. 
David Deans is one of those grim, stronglj^-marked, yet not un- 
attractive portraits which are as characteristic of Scott's pencil as 
the spectacled rabbis and alchemists and bui-goniasters of that of 



CHAP. XVII.] THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR. 



327 



Kembrandt. The two daughters are exquisitely contrasted — the 
unhappy Effie, with her beauty, her innocent vanity, and the pretty 
wilfulness of the spoiled child; and when the ploughshare of sin 
and shame and sorrow drives so ruthlessly over this nook of human 
life, and the "Lily of St. Leonard's'' is crushed to the earth, how 
artlessly, how sublimely does Jeannie arise to save her erring sister ! 
Among all the tributes which genius has ever paid to the modest 
heroism of rustic life, this is perhaps the noblest and the most 
enduring; and when we revere the name of Scott for the glory 
which he has thrown over human nature by this noble and touching 
delineation, let us remember that it was not all fictitious, and that 
the same country which gave birth to him who has recorded this 
triumph of village heroism was also the fatherland of a real Helen 
Walker. 

The following year witnessed the appearance of ^ The Bride of 
Lammermoor' and the 'Legend of Montrose' — forming the third 
series of the 'Tales of My Landlord.' The 'Bride' is a work 
which differs remarkably in its tone from Scott's other productions : 
it has been well remarked that this touching and most painful story 
exemplifies in a narrative form the incessant action of Destiny — of 
that awful and mysterious power which vivifies and pervades the 
ancient Grreek tragedy. We see, even at the very beginning of the 
tale, the "little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand," which gra- 
dually overshadows the whole atmosphere, and at last bursts in ruin, 
in madness, and in despair over the devoted heads of Ravenswood 
and his betrothed. The catastrophe is tremendous, crushing, com- 
plete ; and even the more comic scenes (the melancholy ingenuity 
of poor faithful Caleb) have a sad and hopeless gaiety, which forms 
a dismal and appropriate relief to the profoundly tragic tone of the 
action. One scene in this awful tale is truly terrific — the muttered 
cursing of the three hideous hags at the ill-omened marriage 3 nor is 
the interview between Ravenswood and the gravedigger, or the 
appearance of the unhappy hero to claim his promise from Lucy 
Ashton, inferior. They bear the impress of our elder dramatists : 
they might have been conceived by Ford, by Middleton, or by the 
sombre genius of Webster. 

In the 'Legend of Montrose' Scott returns into his more usual 
and congenial sphere of bright, vivid, energetic, and picturesque 
animation. We come forth, saddened and yet elevated, out of the 
Valley of the Shadow of Death, and we plunge with fresh ardour 
into the sparkling, buoyant waves of romantic life. The talc is very 
short and hurried ; and though it contains several scenes drawn with 
Scott's usual power of lively description, it is not generally found in 
itself one of the most interesting, but derives its principal charm 
from the humours of "Bittmaster Dugald Dalgetty," a soldier of 
fortune, one of the most trul}^ rich, admirable, amusing, and natural 
27* 



328 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [OHAP. XV 11. 



personages ever drawn by tlie hand of genius. This character is a 
masterpiece : the mixture of pedantry, conceit, valour, vulgar assu- 
rance, knowledge of the world, greediness, and a thousand other 
qualities, makes him uniformly and never-failingly delightful when- 
ever he appears, as he does almost constantly, on the scene. 

The last series of the ' Tales of My Landlord' were followed by 
a number of detached romances, more than maintaining the reputa- 
tion which Scott had already acquired; in one year, 1820, appeared 
^Ivanhoe/ 'The Monastery,' and 'The Abbot,' the last-mentioned 
"work being a continuation of the second, though at the same time 
capable of being read as a distinct narrative. In 'Ivanhoe' our 
magician has evoked a new period of English history, and one which 
had never before been revived in fiction. This was the romantic age 
of Richard Coeur-de-Lion ; and it oiFered the occasion not only of 
showing in strong opposition the sturdy prejudices and rude manners 
of the Saxons and the warlike and splendid civilization of the 
Norman race, but of introducing many of the most remarkable 
characters of our popular history — the Lionheart himself, the 
abominable John, and our legendary heroes of the bow and quarter- 
staff, Robin Hood and his ''merry men." The rude log-built 
mansion of the Saxon noble, the frowning battlements of the Norman 
castle, the glittering lists of Ashby, the dungeon, the hermitage, and 
the "good green wood," — every object remains for ever pictured on 
the reader's memory. And then the characters : Cedric, Wamba, 
Gurth, Front-de-Bceuf, Locksley, Friar Tuck, Le Noir Faineant, 
Rebecca, Isaac the Jew, the stern Master of the Templars — all, 
down to the humblest, arise before our astonished eyes "in their 
habit as they lived.'"' 

'The Monastery' is principally injured by the introduction of 
supernatural machinery. The White Lady of Avenel, a kind of 
tutelary spirit protecting the fortunes of a noble family, is not in 
accordance with that air of reality which Scott communicates to all 
his fictions. The appearances of this tricksy spirit are indeed 
beautifully described, and the poetry which conveys her oracles — 
"for still her speech was song" — is exceedingly graceful ; but her 
agency is unnecessary, it impedes the story, and some of her pranks 
are quite unworthy of the dignity of her mission. All that she 
does could have been effected much better without her; and she is 
invariably found to jar with the rest of the action. Christie of the 
Clinthill is a spirited sketch of the lean, wolfish, dissolute J ackman ; 
and the scenes in the castle of Julian Avenel are draw^n with a 
powerful and pathetic hand; but the enthusiast, Sir Piercy Shafton, 
though amusing, is a caricature of what was already a caricature of 
Shakspeare's. Grenerally speaking, this novel is less admired (we 
think deservedly so) than its successor, ' The Abbot,' in which we 
resume the adventures of the two brothers whom we left in ' The 



CHAP. XVII.] 



KENILWORTH — PIRATE. 



329 



Monastery' just entering upon life. The cliief personage is the 
unhappy Mary Stuart, whose character and misfortuces possess in 
fiction a power of tender and pathetic interest as inexhaustible as the 
fascination she exerted on all around her during her life, and which 
no lapse of time seems likely to deprive of its enchantment. The 
dramatis personce of this great and living work are numerous and 
splendid : the Regent Murray, the stern and haughty Lady Douglas, 
Catherine Seton, Adam Woodcock the falconer, Roland Graeme, — 
all are stamped with life and individuality. Nor is the breathless 
interest of the principal events less worthy of admiration, nor the 
fresh animation and vivacity of the dialogues, nor the noble spirit of 
dignity and gentleness that pervades the whole. 

The following year, 1821, was signalised by two more productions 
of this astonishing being, two singularly different, not only from 
each other, but from all which preceded them, and marked by the 
same power and beauty : these were ' Kenilworth' and ' The Pirate.' 
Kenilworth was a gorgeous pageant of a period of our history dear 
and glorious to every English heart — the reign of Elizabeth. The 
ehief action is the secret marriage of the great and splendid Leices- 
ter, Elizabeth's favourite, with a beautiful woman of inferior rank, 
and the fatal facility with which the haughty courtier, listening to 
the dictates of ambition and the perfidious advice of a wicked intri- 
guer, sacrifices to the hope of becoming the Queen's husband the 
happiness and the life of his innocent victim. Much of this romance 
is founded on fact : the splendid revelries of Kenilworth are cq^ied 
from authentic documents of the time, only vivified and gilded ""by 
the glow of genius ; Sussex — the frank and noble Sussex — Raleigh, 
Leicester himself, Elizabeth, are faithful and glorious reproductions 
of history; and the manners, costume, and, so to speak, atmosphere 
of the whole work afford perhaps the noblest instance which literature 
can show of the power of genius to evoke past ages and persons in 
the brilliant hues and motion of life. Perhaps, amid the thousand 
fictions of the so-called romantic school to which the success of 
Scott gave birth, there are no scenes even approaching in probability, 
in ease, grace, and splendour, to the audience in this romance where 
the lion-hearted Queen commands the reconciliation of Leicester and 
Sussex, to the episode of Raleigh's first court success, to the passages 
in the country hostelry of the Black Bear, to the entry of Elizabeth 
into Kenilworth ; and assuredly the power of pathetic terror was 
never displayed more intensely and with a more Shakspearian concise- 
ness than in the murder of Amy Robsart. 

In ' The Pirate' we have a new and untrodden region, new manners, 
a new nature; we are transported to the "stormy Hebrides," 

"Placed far amid the melancholy main," 
and inhabited by a people of ancient Norwegian descent. Even in 



330 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVII. 



this barren nook of eartli, where human character might be expected 
to be as monotonous as its starved and storm-lashed herbage, he has 
found a rich harvest of interest and beauty : the noble old Udaller ; 
his two daughters, each so lovely a picture, yet distinguished with 
so gentle a touch, like Celia and Kosalind; Noma of the Fitful-head, 
half-maniac, half-pythoness ; Claude Halcro, Mistress Bahie, and 
the unfortunate Yellowley, Bunce, and the whole company of bucca- 
neers. 

The next romance we have to mention is ^The Fortunes of Nigel/ 
which appeared in the following year, 1822. Here we have a 
glimpse into the city life of London in the sixteenth century, and 
the action is as vast, as crowded, and as varied as the theatre. The 
court and the domestic manners of the weak and pedantic, but well- 
meaning James I., that crowned humorist; the shop, the street, the 
tavern, the ordinary, the theatre, and above all, the squalid retreats 
of crime and misery — xllsatia; everything appears before us in its 
true colours, with its true light and shade and true proportion, and 
peopled with figures so varied, so life-like and individual, that after 
reading the novel we cannot divest ourselves of a firm conviction of 
the reality of persons, places, and events. So much so, indeed, is 
this the case with nearly all Scott's historical novels, that, when we 
afterwards find in authentic history any proofs of occasional incorrect- 
ness or even anachronism in these fictions, we deny the evidence of 
our reason, and cannot be induced to think that the manners, the 
characters, or the events, could have been otherwise than as the 
artist has represented them. Thus it is hardly a paradox to say, that 
the creations of sublime genius are more real than reality, more true 
than truth itself ; and that we really know more of the character of 
Hamlet, for instance, than we do of Napoleon, or even of a man 
with whom we are in daily personal intercourse. In this novel of 
Nigel' the character of King James is a case in point to our remark ; 
and the numerous other dramatis jpersonce. are marked by the same 
power. The murder of the old usurer in Whitefriars is a most 
terrific bit of night-painting, and the action flows on with a clear 
and rapid current. 

The year 1823 again gave to the astounded world three excellent 
and wonderfully varied fictions — ^Peveril of the Peak,* ^ Quentin 
Durward,' and ' St. Ronan's Weil.' In ' Peveril' we have a picture 
of English society soon after the restoration of Charles II., and 
many pictures of the court and of the various parties which divided 
the nation at the period of the ridiculous panic of Titus Gates' pre- 
tended popish plot. The most interesting characters are Sir Geoffrey 
Peverel, a stout old Derbyshire cavalier ) a finely marked sketch of 
a fanatical republican, Major Bridgenorth, a relic of the Protectorate ; 
and, above all, Charles himself, the easy, heartless, good-natured 
libertine. 



CHAP. XVII.] PEVERIL — QUENTIN DURWARD. 



331 



'* Who never said a foolish thing, 
And never did a wise one." 

Yilliers, the profligate Duke of Buckingham, is brought prominently 
forward ; but in attempting to give identity to that extraordinary 
compound of vices, follies, wit, and inconsistency, our novelist has 
signally failed. He followed the admirable character given in 
Dryden's immortal satire, and produced, not a man, but a bundle of 
epigrams. The plot of this piece is chiefly earned on by Christian, 
one of those passionless and all-penetrating intriguers whom we so 
often see in novels, and so seldom in real life ; and his principal 
instrument for the attainment of his purpose (a long-cherished plan 
of revenging on the Countess of Derby the death of his brother) is 
the employment of a deaf and dumb girl, who afterwards turns out 
to be his own daughter, and to have been shamming deaf and dumb 
for a long succession of years. All this is hardly natural, and not 
worthy, even if it were, of such a genius as that of Scott. 

^Durward' carries us to France and Burgundy in the reign of 
Louis XI., and we follow with unceasing delight and interest the 
progress of a young Scottish soldier of fortune to fame, riches, and 
the hand of a fair countess. His first interview with Louis, who is 
disguised as a mean old merchant, and attended by his abominable 
minister Tristan I'Hermite, is highly dramatic, and the gradual view 
we gain of the dark and -tortuous character of that cruel and miser- 
able king, and his gloomy retreat in the castle of Plessis, is extreme- 
ly fine. None of Scott's works is more powerfully conceived than 
this, nor has he in any other instance displayed a broader and vaster 
canvas, filled up with more striking and varied groups. The vile 
instruments which the subtle monarch employs to carry out his per- 
fidious policy — the catlike barber Oliver le D-An, Tristan and his two 
congenial satellites Petit Andre and Trois-Echelles, the wretched 
Bohemian — how finely are these relieved against the nobler charac- 
ters, historical as well as fictitious, and how admirably are they all 
grouped around the grand images of the two protagonists — Louis, 
and Charles of Burgundy, the wolf and the bull of middle-age his- 
tory, one the emblem and embodiment of Fraud, the other of 
brutal Force ! Dunois, Crevecoeur, Glaleotti, Crawford, the rude 
bravery of the Balafre — it is absolutely impossible to draw any line 
of distinction between the phantoms of real men evoked by this 
''mighty magic from the dusty tomb of history, and those created 
by its power. The scenes at Peronne are written with a firm hand 
and a sort of triumphant mastery, which almost makes us forget the 
terrific impressiveness of the attack on the bishop's castle at Liege, 
and the murder of the good prelate by the rufiian De la Marck. 

In 'St. Bonan's Well' we have scenes and manners of modern 
society, but the approachiog misfortunes of the illustrious novelist 
seem to have thrown a shade of gloom over the work which its very 



832 



OUTLINES or GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVII. 



merits only render more painful to the reader. This contrast of tone 
is the more perceptible, as Scott's view of life and mankind is in 
general cheerful and genial. The story is of a deeply painful and 
tragic kind, and throughout the work we are haunted with the pre- 
sentiment of ill, hopeless, inevitable, rendered the more insupport- 
able by the meanness, the frivolity, and the baseness of the majority 
of the persons. This same mournful presentiment of impending 
fate forms in 'The Bride of Lammermoor' the great charm — the 
awful fascination of the work ; but there it is unmingled with con- 
tempt for the personages: it is rendered solemn, dignified by distance; 
here it is vulgarised by the general tone of the dramatis personce, 
and we feel the pang of sorrow without the dignity which can half 
console us. Touchwood, however, is a spirited sketch of a character 
which Scott had not before attempted to portray; and Meg Dods, the 
old innkeeper, is a delineation in his happiest vein. 

In 1824 appeared ' Redgauntlet,' a novel in which (though the 
story is somewhat confused and imperfect) we find some admirable 
studies of character, and some scenes delineated with extraordinary 
power. Fairford, the old Scottish lawyer, is exquisitely real, and it 
is more than probable that it is a portrait of Scott's own father ; 
many of the legal scenes and personages are doubtless reminiscences 
of the author's own personal experience, and Peter Peebles and his 
trial are as fine as anything in Fielding. We have always consider- 
ed, too, that Nanty Ewart, the smuggling captain in this novel, is a 
chef-d'oeuvre worthy to be placed beside Scott's most admirable crea- 
tions, and the scene in which he recounts his early life among the 
most inimitable passages of fiction. Of the art of tale-telling Scott 
has given in this romance two most consummate examples — this 
story of Nanty Ewart, and the unsurpassable ghost-story told by the 
blind fiddler to Darsie Latimer. The two friends are charming and 
highly-finished delineations ; Joshua Greddes, the worthy quaker, is 
very attractive; and Thomas Turnbull, the hypocritical smuggler, 
as superlative as Ewart. 

The next year brought forth the first series of the ' Tales of the 
Crusaders,' containing 'The Betrothed' and 'The Talisman.' Of 
these two the first is so much inferior to the other, that we shall pass 
very rapidly over it ; it contains very few striking scenes, and those 
chiefly of a warlike character : but in ' The Talisman ' we have one 
of the finest, most glowing, and most enchanting revivals of the days 
of chivalry, vivified by the introduction of splendid historical person- 
ages and exploits dear to the national heart. It is an episode of the 
crusade in which the Lion-hearted King achieved those exploits 
which furnished such inexhaustible matter to the rhapsodists of the 
Middle Ages, and associated his fame with the fondest recollections 
of chivalric glory. Into this sea of splendid achievement and gor- 
geous pageantry Scott threw himself with the passion of a Trouvere, 



SCOTT : HIS LIFE. 



333 



with the power of a consummate artist, and the erudition of an anti- 
quarian. We repeat, without fear of contradiction, that we know no 
work so truly Homeric in its effect as this. How finely conceived, 
too, are the female characters, Edith and Queen Berengaria; and 
what a crowd of noble figures are grouped around the heroic person 
of the king — Saladin himself, Philip of France, the wicked Hos- 
pitaller, the Knight of the Leopard I We are here in the very midst 
of mediaeval chivalry ; and, what is more wonderful, we do not 
regard its splendid pageants with mere unlearned and unsympathising 
curiosity, but the poet's true epic enthusiasm inspires us^ in spite of 
ourselves, with the feelings of contemporaries. 

-Scott's ruling passion was for the life of a British country gentle- 
man. His sweetest reverie was the hope of transmitting to his 
descendants, not only a name famous in Border annals, and glorified 
by intellectual triumphs, but a landed estate sufficient to support its 
splendour. To attain this object he laboured with an almost super- 
human industry ; and the immense revenue which he never ceased 
to derive from his works he devoted to the purchase and augmenta- 
tion of his landed estate, and to the building of Abbotsford. Here 
he transformed a small house, situated on the banks of his beloved 
Tweed, and in the midst of a wild, bare, and dreary scenery, into a 
fairy castle — a ''romance in stone and lime."" The natural dreari- 
ness of the scene he remedied by vast plantings of trees, and on the 
house and surrounding estate he employed not much less than 
70,000/. Here he lived, in the true splendour of a castellan, and 
here he delighted to receive, with the graceful hospitaKty he loved 
to practise, the fair, the noble, and the famous, and here he " did the 
honours for all Scotland." It is hardly possible to conceive a higher 
point of happiness than this. In the prime of life, blessed with a 
promising family to continue his name; loved, venerated, nay, 
almost adored by his dependants, his friends, his countrymen, 
Europe — the whole world; in the full flush and vigorour of his 
powers, for he never relaxed during his whole life his unremitting 
industry, (managing, by early rising and regularity, to leave his days 
free for society) ; this surprising man had not only confen-ed upon 
the profession of letters a splendour which it had never before 
known — he must be held to have attained as near felicity as humanity 
could aspire. But the blight was already at work at this noble tree ; 
the worm was gnawing at its core ; it was soon to fall prostrate, with 
all its honours thick upon it, and give the world at once a memorable 
example of the instability of human things, and a most touching 
proof of fortitude and greatness of mind. . Scott's earlier works had 
been published by his friend John Ballantyne, and the secret of their 
authorship had been preserved with a constant and surprising fidelity: 
but in an evil hour the novelist entered into a kind of concealed 
partnership with him ; and the commercial distresses of 1826 involved 



834 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVII. 



the firm in the failure of Constable and other great publishing 
speculators. Some idea of this tremendous crisis may be formed 
when we state that Scott's liabilities were not under 117,000/. From 
this consequence of unfortunate speculation Scott might have in a 
great measure escaped bj taking advantage of the indulgence of the 
English law^ but with more than the spirit of chivalry, this great 
man conceived the colossal project of paying off with his pen this 
huge mountain of debt. This incredible plan he conceived, and, 
what is more, almost executed ! But he perished in the effort : he 
kept unstained the ancestral honour of his house, and unspotted the 
pure glory of his name, but he burst his mighty heart in the unequal 
struggle. On learning the full extent of his frightful losses, he 
immediately abandoned the rural splendour which he adorned, shut 
himself up in an humble lodging in Edinburgh, and set valorously 
to his huge task. In six years it was almost accomplished — in six 
years he had produced new and hardly less splendid works than the 
long bright series we have been examining ; but Scott himself — the 
martyr of his commercial integrity — was dying in exhaustion, in 
delirium, and disease. Perhaps the annals of literature do not 
present so sublime and so touching a fact as this : it is a fact which 
has a peculiar significancy to an Englishman, as it is a noble instance 
of that chivalrous delicacy of commerce to which our country owes 
a mercantile grandeur, power, and supremacy, as peculiar and as 
unrivalled as the wisdom of her senates or the glory of her arms. 

The historical tale of ' Woodstock' was the first result of his 
indomitable energy in resisting this great disaster : it was published 
in 1826. Its subject embraces some of the most exciting episodes 
of the civil war, and the characters of Cromwell and of Charles II. 
figure in many of its finest scenes. But the gem of the book is the 
noble old cavalier, Sir Henry Lee of Ditchley, one of the most 
complete and touching embodiments of highborn loyalty that ever 
was conceived. The tale is full of movement, variety, and pictu- 
resqueness, and the minor personages too are stamped with strong 
vitality : Wildrake, the three Commissioners, Jocelyn JoUiffe, Crom- 
well's canting but resistless soldiers — all, even down to Bevis the 
majestic stag-hound, are such figures as no author but Scott could 
have drawn. Indeed we may mention here that a peculiar love for 
dogs was one principal mark by which these wonderful novels were 
ascribed to him, long before the confession of the great man identified 
beyond all dispute the author of ' Waverley' with Walter Scott. 
There are very few of this admirable series of works which do not 
contain some exquisite portrait of a dog. Who can forget Bevis (in 
this novel) — that truly comic and attractive generation of Mustards 
and Peppers which the mere mention of Dandie Dinmont conjures 
up in our minds — or the noble Roswal, lying wounded beside the 
banner of St. Greorge — ay, or even Wolf, the ragged attendant of 



CHAP, XVn.] SCOTt's misfortunes — WOODSTOCK. 



335 



Gurth the swineherd ? Scott enters into the personality of the dog 
character — his affection, his courage, even his humours and caprices. 
This is no weak indication of a great and noble heart. The escape 
of "the King in Woodstock, the ineffectual search of Cromwell for 
the royal fugitive, and, above all, the deeply touching concluding 
scene, the good old knight's euthanasia at the triumphal moment of 
the Restoration — all these are in Scott's very finest manner. It was 
at this period that the great poet threw aside the mask of incognito : 
at a public dinner at Edinburgh Scott claimed the authorship of all 
these admirable fictions, which had, however, almost from the first, 
been universally attributed to him on the simple ground that nobody 
else could have been the author, and no less from a vast mass of 
internal evidence distinctly pointing at him as the only man whose 
nation, genius, profession, tastes, and even prejudices, perfectly coin- 
cided with the general character of the works. 

In 1827 appeared the 'History of Napoleon' — a work of vigour 
and liveliness, but written too near the gigantic events which it com- 
memorated, and too much tinged with the strong national and 
political prejudices of the author, to be permanently valuable. Scott's 
strong Tory and legitimatist principles, and his attachment to the 
English Episcopal Church, rendered him incapable of justly appreci- 
ating the greatest fact of modern history — the French Revolution — 
and, consequently, of judging fairly (conscientiously as he strove to 
do so) of the political and legislative character of Bonaparte ; and it 
was hardly to be expected that an enthusiastic patriot in England, at 
the very moment of his country's triumph, could hold with a steady 
hand the balance of historical impartiality. 

In the following year appeared the two series of the ' Chronicles 
of the Canongate,' the first containing ' The Highland Widow,' 
^ The Two Drovers,' and ' The Surgeon's Daughter ; ' and the second 
the single novel, * The Fair Maid of Perth.' The fiction which 
serves as introduction to this collection is written with great acute- 
ness and knowledge of life, but is tinged with something of that 
desponding tone which we objected against ' St. Ronan's Well.' Of 
these tales, the two first, though exceedingly slight, are powerful and 
pathetic ; but the third, particularly the scenes in India, exhibits a 
marked want of vividness and condensation. In ' The Fair Maid 
of Perth ' this glorious lamp of genius and wisdom seems to give a 
dying and convulsive flash ; for, in spite of a very perceptible 
languor in the narrative, some of the scenes (as the battle between 
the Clan Chattan and the Clan Quhele) are delineated with strong 
touches of the old minstrel fire; and the character of the smith, 
Henry of the Wynd, is worthy of his most glorious days. What is 
general in the above remarks may be applied also to ''Anne of 
Geierstein,' published in 1829, though the work met with a more 
satisfactory success from the circumstance of the scene being a new 
28 



336 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVII. 



and hitherto untrodden one, Switzerland. ^Anne of Geierstein' is 
closely historical in its tone ; and the episode concluding with the 
execution of Pierre de Hagenbach, the tyrannic governor of La 
Ferette, is vigorous and striking. The Swiss deputies, particularly 
the noble old Landamman, are contrasted with strong dramatic 
power to the splendid and haughty Charles ; the scene of the recep- 
tion of the embassy is very fine ; though there is in this novel no- 
thing approaching in tragic pathos and majestic intensity of feeling 
to the death of Lady Witherington in ' The Surgeon's Daughter.* 
The Alpine storm with which 'Anne of Geierstein' opens is grand 
and poetical ; and the character of the good but childish King Rene 
is very exquisitely drawn. 

The last fictions of this wonderful writer were ^Castle Dangerous' 
and ' Count Robert of Paris f the former a chivalric episode in the 
Border wars, and the latter a scene from Byzantine history. Both 
works, though received by the public with grateful indulgence, pre- 
sent melancholy evidence that the gigantic task undertaken by Scott 
was too Herculean even for his untiring energy and heroic courage. 
A first stroke of paralysis in 1830 was unable to arrest his industry; 
but a second, in 1831, rendered it necessary for his family to divert 
him from the incessant literary labour which his mind, though now 
ruined, still continued to perform. The Government placed at his 
disposal a ship of war; and he visited Malta, Naples (where he 
resided about four months), and ultimately Rome. Through these 
fair regions was carried this venerable and illustrious wreck, and he 
was brought home to die. He lingered on some little time at 
Abbotsford, helpless, unconscious, and patient ; his mind wandering 
to his professional employment, and sometimes to that* princely hos- 
pitality he so nobly exercised, listening to passages from the Bible 
and his favourite poet Crabbe, but never once referring to those 
magnificent monuments of genius by which he had immortalised his 
country and glorified humanity itself. ''About half-past one P.M./' 
says Mr. Lockhart, his son-in-law and biographer, " on the 21st of 
September, 1832, Sir Walter breathed his last, in the presence of 
all his children. It was a beautiful day — so warm that every 
window was wide open — and so perfectly still that the sound of all 
others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over 
its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around the bed, and 
his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes." 

His miscellaneous works are exceedingly numerous and valuable. 
The 'Tales of a Grandfather/ remarkable episodes of Scottish history 
related for children, is perhaps one of the most admirable books for 
the very young that was ever composed, and may be read with delight 
at any age. The ' Lives of the Novelists,' and his innumerable con- 
tributions to the 'Edinburgh Review' and other critical journals, 
are rich, genial, and full of a fine spirit of learning and wisdom; 



CHAP. XVII.] SOUTHEY: THALABA — KEHAMA. 337 

their only defect is their too universally laudatory tone ; for Scott, 
who never had an enemy, seems incapable of saying a harsh thing. 
No man — and certainly no literary man — ever passed so long and so 
illustrious a life without a single personal enmity. His character 
was as amiable, generous, manly, and social, as his genius was varied 
and sublime. 

The life of Robert Southey, extending from 1774 to 1843, was a 
rare instance of unremitting literary activity; and the immense col- 
lection of miscellaneous works which he left behind him is highly 
honourable to his learning and his talents, though it is only as a 
prose writer that he is likely to descend to posterity. He began life 
as a violent partisan of the principles of the French Revolution ; 
and in his earlier works — the ridiculous drama of ^ Wat Tyler,' and 
the extravagant and tedious epic, ' Joan of Arc ' — he devotes all his 
powers to the support of extreme liberal opinions. He soon, how- 
ever, abandoned his early principles, and became one of the most 
thoroughgoing supporters of monarchical and conservative doctrines; 
was named, in 1813, laureate, and exhibited in the maintenance of 
his new political creed as much fervour, virulence, unscrupulousness, 
and, it is but just to say, sincerity also, as he had shown for the 
Utopian theories of a republican millennium. To give some idea of 
the uncompromising and extreme character of his political predilec- 
tions, we need only mention that in ' Joan of Arc ' he has painted 
as the blackest of tyrants our heroic sovereign Henry V., and placed 
the Emperor Titus among the "murderers of mankind,^' while, in 
the later stage of his political transformation, he has raised the more 
than almost morbid obstinacy of George III. to the honours of an 
absolute canonisation ! 

In 1801 was published ^Thalaba,' and in 1810 the 'Curse of 
Kehama,' two works of a narrative character, which have many 
points of resemblance. They are both, in their subject, wild, extrava- 
gant, unearthly, full of supernatural machinery, but of a kind as 
difficult to manage with elFect as at first sight splendid and attractive. 
'Thalaba' is a tale of Arabian enchantment, full of magicians, 
dragons, hippogrififs, and monsters. In 'Kehama' the poet has 
selected for his groundwork the still more unmanageable mythology 
of the Hindoos — a vast, incoherent and clumsy structure of super- 
stition, more hopelessly unadapted to the purposes of poetry than 
even the Fetishism of the savages of Africa. The poems are 
written in an irregular and wandering species of rhythm — the 
'Thalaba' altogether without rhyme; and the language abounds in 
an affected simplicity and perpetual obtrusion of vulgar and puerile 
phraseology. The works have a most painful air of laxity and want 
of intellectual hone and muscle. There are many passages of gor- 
geous description, and many proofs of powerful fancy and imagina- 
tion; but the persons and adventures are so supernatural, so com- 



838 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVH. 



pletelj out of the circle of human sympathies both in their triumphs 
and sufferings, and they are so scrupulously divested of all the 
passions and circumstances of humanity, that these gorgeous and 
ambitious works produce on us the impression of a splendid but un- 
substantial nightmare : they are cEgri somnia, the vast disjointed 
visions of fever and delirium. In 'Thalaba' we have a series of 
adventures, encountered by an Arabian hero, who fights with demons 
and enchanters, and finally overthrows the dominion of the powers 
of Evil in the Domdaniel caverns, "under the roots of the ocean." 
It is more extravagant than anything in the 'Thousand and One 
Nights indeed it is nothing but a quintessence of all the puerile 
and monstrous fictions of Arabian fancy. In the Oriental legends 
these extravagances are pardonable, and even characteristic, for in 
them we take into the account the childish and wonder-loving cha- 
racter of the audience to which such fantastic inventions were 
addressed, and we remember that they are scattered, in the books of 
the East, over a much greater surface, so to say, whereas here we 
have them all consolidated into one mass of incoherent monstrosity. 
We miss, too, the exquisite glimpses alForded us by those tales in 
the common and domestic life in the East. 'Kehama' is founded 
upon one of the most monstrous superstitions of Hindoo belief, viz. 
that a man, by persisting in an almost incredible succession of volun- 
tary penances and self-torture, can acquire a control over the divini- 
ties themselves : and in this poem a wicked enchanter goes near to 
overthrow the dominion of Brahma, Vishnoo, and Seeva. The poem 
is full of demons, goblins, terrific sacrifices, and pictures of super- 
natural existence ; and the slender thread of human (or half-human) 
interest is too feeble to unite them into a whole. These poems, like 
everything of Southey's, exhibit an incredible amount of multifarious 
learning; but it is learning generally rather curious than valuable, 
and it is not vivified by any truly genial, harmonising power of 
originality. 

In the interval between the publication of these poems appeared 
a volume of metrical tales and the historical epic of 'Madoc.'' In 
the tales, as in general in his minor poems, Southey exhibits a degree 
of vigour and originality of thought for which we look in vain in his 
longer works. Some of his legends, translated from the Spanish 
and Portuguese (in which languages Southey was a proficient), or from 
the obscurer stores of the Latin chronicles of the Middle Ages, or 
the monkish legends of the saints, are very vigorous and characteristi- 
cally written. The author's spirit was strongly legendary ; and he 
has caught the true accent, not of heroic and chivalric tradition, but 
of the religious enthusiasm of monastic times : and some of his 
minor original poems have great tenderness and simple dignity of 
thought, though often injured by a studied meanness and creeping- 
ness of expression; for the fatal error of the school to which he 



CHAP. XVII.] 



MADOC: RODERICK. 



339 



belonged was a theory that the real everyday phraseology of the 
common people was better adapted to the purposes of poetry than 
the language of cultivated and educated men ; and thus the writers 
of this class often labour as industriously to acquire the language of 
the workshop and the nursery as the poets of Louis XIV. after an 
artificial dignity and elevation. 

^ Madoc' is founded on one of the most absurd legends connected 
with the early history of America. Madoc is a Welsh prince of the 
twelfth century, who is represented as making the discovery of the 
Western world and his contests with the Mexicans, and ultimate 
conversion of that people from their cruel idolatry, form the main 
action of the poem, which, like 'Joan of Arc,' is written in blank 
verse. The poet thus had at his disposal the rich store of picturesque 
scenery, manners, and wonderful adventure to be found in the 
Spanish narratives of the exploits of Columbus, Pizarro, Cortes, and 
the Conquestadors. But the victories which are so wonderful when 
related as gained over the Mexicans by the comparatively well-armed 
Spaniards of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, are perfectly 
incredible when attributed to a band of savages little superior in civili- 
zation and the art of war to the people they invaded. Though the 
poem is crowded with scenes of more than possible splendour, of 
more than human cruelty, courage, and superstition, the eflPect is 
singularly languid ; and the exaggeration of prowess and sutFering 
produces the same effect upon the mind as the extravagance of fiction 
in the two Oriental poems. There is nothing that requires so firm 
and steady a hand to manage as the extraordinary; the modesty of 
nature, the boundary of the possible, once overstepped, the reader's 
curiosity grows more insatiable as it is more liberally fed. When 
we have had a giant twenty feet high, we require one of sixty ; if 
the hero conquers a dragon which vomits poison, we soon want him 
to overthrow a monster which belches fire ; and so on in an infinite 
series, till all is extravagance, monstrosity, and childish gaping folly. 

' Kehamia' was followed at an interval of four years, by ' Koderick, 
the Last of the Goths,' a poem in blank verse, and of a much more 
modest and credible character than its predecessors. The subject is 
the punishment and repentance of the last Grothic king of Spain, 
whose vices, oppressions, and in particular an insult offered to the 
virtue of Florinda, daughter of Count Julian, incited that noble to 
betray his country to tiie Moors. The general insurrection of the 
Spaniards against their Moslem oppressors, the exploits of the illustri- 
ous Pelayo, and the reappearance of Roderick at the great battle 
which put an end to the infidel dominion, form the materials of the 
action. The king, in the disguise of a hermit, figures in most of the 
scenes; and his agonizing repentance for his past crimes, and 
humble trust in the mercy of God, is the keynote or prevailing tone 
of the work. Though free from the injudicious employment of 
28* 



840 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [OHAP. XVII. 



supernatural macbinerj, and though containing some descriptions 
of undeniable merit, and several scenes of powerful tenderness and 
pathos, there is the same want of reality and human interest which 
characterises Southey's poems in general, and the tone is too uniformly 
ecstatic and agonizing. His personages, like his scenes, have some- 
thing unreal, phantomlike, dreamy : they are often beautiful, but it 
is the beauty not of the earth, or even of the clouds, but of the 
mirage and the Fata Morgana. His robe of inspiration sits gracefully 
and majestically upon him, but it is too voluminous in its folds, and 
too heavy in its gorgeous texture, for the motion of real existence : 
he is never " succinct for speed," and his flowing drapery obstructs 
and embarrasses his steps. He has power ^ but not force — his 
genius is rather passive than active. 

On being appointed poet laureate he paid his tribute of court 
adulation with an eagerness and regularity which showed how com- 
plete was his conversion from the political faith of his youthful days. 
A convert is generally a fanatic; and Southey's laureate odes 
exhibit a fierce, passionate, controversial hatred of his former liberal 
opinions which gives interest even to the ambitious monotony, the 
convulsive mediocrity of his official lyrics. In one of them, the 
^Vision of Judgment,' he has essayed to revive the hexameter in 
English verse. This experiment, tried in so many languages, and 
•with such indifferent success, had been attempted by Gabriel Harvey 
in the reign of Elizabeth, and the universal ridicule which hailed 
Southey's attempt was excited quite as much by the absurdity of 
the metre as by the extravagant flattery of the poem itself. The 
deification, or rather beatification of George III. drew from Byron 
some of the severest strokes of his irresistible ridicule, and gave hira 
the opportunity of severely revenging upon Southey some of the 
latter's attacks upon his principles and poetry. 

Southey was a man of indefatigable industry; his prose works 
are very numerous and valuable for their learning and sincerity, but 
the little ^Life of Nelson/ written to furnish young seamen with a 
simple narrative of the exploits of England's greatest naval hero, 
has perhaps never been equalled for the perfection of its style. In 
his other works — the principal of which are 'The Book of the 
Church,' ^The Lives of the British Admirals,' that of Wesley, a 
^ History of Brazil,' and of the Peninsular War — we find the same 
admirable art of clear vigorous English, and no less that strong pre- 
judice, violent political and literary partiality, and a tone of haughty, 
acrimonious, arrogant self-confidence, which so much detract from 
his many excellent qualities as a writer, and as a man, his sincerity, 
his learning, his conscientiousness, and his natural benevolence of 
character. 

In his innumerable critical and historical essays, chiefly contributed 
to the ' Quarterly Beview/ in the ' Colloquies ' (a book of imaginary 



CHAP. XYIII.] 



MOORE. 



341 



conversations composed on a most absurd plan), and in the strange 
miscellaneous work entitled ' The Doctor/ we see a gross ignorance 
of the commonest principles of political and economic science, and 
an aiTogant, dictatorial, persecuting tone, which render these works 
melancholy examples of the truth that intolerance is not always 
naturally associated with weakness of intellect or with malignity of 
heart. 



CHAPTER XYIII. 

MOORE, BYRON, AND SHELLEY. 

Moore: Translation of Anacreon, and Little's Poems — Political Satires — The 
Fudge Family — Irish Melodies — Lalla Rookh — Epicurean — Biographies. 
Byron: Hours of Idleness, and English Bards — Romantic Poems — The 
Dramas — Childe Harold — Don Juan — Death of Byron. Shelley : Poems and 
Philosophy — Queen Mab, Prometheus Unbound, Alastor, &c. — The Cenci 
— Minor Poems and Lyrics. 

We have seen how the name of Walter Scott was the t3^pe, sign, 
or measure of the first step in literature towards romanticism, or 
rather of the first step made in modern times from classicism — from 
the regular, the correct, the established. 

The next step in this new career was made by Thomas Moore, 
who broke up new and fresh fountains of original life, first in the 
inexhaustible East, and secondly in his native Ireland. In the 
former field, indeed, it may be thought that he was perhaps anticipated 
by Southey, so many of whose poems are on Oriental subjects ; but 
these two poets are sufficiently dissimilar to absolve the author of 
^ Lalla Rookh' from the charge of servilely copying, or, indeed, of 
following, the writer of ^ Thalaba' and ' Kehama in the latter and 
more valuable quality, of a national Irish lyrist, he stands absolutely 
alone and unapproachable. 

Thomas Moore, the Anacreon and Catullus, perhaps in some 
sense the Petronius and the Apuleius also, of the nineteenth century, 
was born in Dublin in the year 178(T. Belonging essentially to the 
middle class, and a Roman Catholic besides, it may be easily conceived 
how he must have sympathised in the deep discontent which pervaded 
his country at that agitated period. Moore passed some time at the 
university of his native city, and soon after gave proof that he had 
made a more than ordinary progi-ess in at least the elegant depart- 
ment of classical scholarship. His first work was a translation into 



842 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVIII. 



English Terse of tlie ^ Odes' of Anacreon, in which he exhibits a 
very great extent of reading, and no mean proficiency in Greek 
philology. The translation, however, is much more valuable as 
giving us an earnest of the poet's future powers than as a faithful 
reproduction of the original : it is more interesting as Moore than 
as Anacreon : it is Irish rather than Greek. 

Canova is said to have exhibited his Venus in a sort of close 
recess, surrounded by crimson drapery, and lighted by a single lamp; 
he is even said to have slightly tinged the marble with a foint rosy 
glow; and this is what Moore has done to Anacreon. He has 
diffused over his version a rapturous and passionate air not in 
harmony with the unadorned simplicity of the Greek; he is fanciful 
where the original is sensuous. The reputation, both as poet and as 
scholar, which Moore acquired by his Anacreon, combined with his 
musical and conversational talents, immediately introduced him to 
the refined and intellectual society then assembled round the Prince 
of Wales, afterwards George IV.; for the heir apparent had sur- 
rounded himself (as naturally happens in a constitutional monarchy) 
with a strong phalanx of opposition wits and statesmen, and Charles 
Fox and Sheridan arrayed themselves with the Prince and against 
the existing government of the King. 

In 1808 Moore received an appointment in the island of Bermuda, 
which he not long afterwards lost through the malversation of a 
person employed under him, whose dishonesty exposed Moore to the 
prosecution of the government, and involved him in difiiculties from 
which he did not easily extricate himself. During his absence from 
England, both in the beautiful Antilles and his subsequent retire- 
ment at Paris, he continued to be an industrious author. We must 
mention a small volume of ' Odes and Epistles,' written in singularly 
easy and graceful language, with very little pretension to elaborate 
finish (he calls them himself " prose tagged with rhyme^'), but 
exhibiting the dawning of those powers which were to render him 
unequalled in a peculiar and very difficult line. The other produc- 
tion of this period was a small collection of poems, almost all of an 
erotic character, and some translated from Catullus, and other poets, 
Greek and Latin, of the same class. This volume was published 
under the pseudonym of "Thomas Little," and the merit of its 
contents, though occasionally great, was not sufficient to counter- 
balance the sensual and immoral tone of many of the pieces. In 
this respect ' Little's Poems' are indeed open to very severe repre- 
hension, and, without affecting any Pharisaical degree of moral 
severity, we may affirm that they have really done a great deal of 
harm. 

He now commenced a long series of political satires — light arrows 
of ridicule aimed against men and measures, generally only of a 
temporary interest, but so sharply pointed with wit, so lightly 



CHAP. XVin.] MOORE : SATIRES — FUDGE FAMILY. 



343 



feathered with grace and apropos, that these slight shafts will retain 
to remote posterity very high value as perfect masterpieces of their 
kind. Moore did for the political "squib'' what H. B. has done 
for the political caricature — "he deprived it of half its evil by 
depriving it of all its grossness." The Chinese are said to exhibit 
fireworks of exquisite brilliancy and ingenuity so contrived that they 
can be let off in a room, not only without danger of fire, but with 
the peculiarity that in exploding they emit a fragrant odour. These 
light productions of Moore are like the Chinese fireworks : they are 
wonderfully varied, petulant, and sparkling and instead of the 
heavy vapours of personal malignity, they spread around, after 
crackling and flashing through their momentary existence, a fra- 
grance of good taste, good humour, and classic grace. Though they 
must have given, as we know they did, the most exquisite pain to 
their unfortunate victims, they are absolutely the most unanswerable 
and galling attacks that were ever made ; and the only way to con- 
ceal the wound must have been by joining in the laugh. They are 
full of the most happy turns of ingenuity, of the gay exhaustless 
fancy which seems the peculiar heritage of the Irish intellect, and 
they show a vast extent of curious and out-of-the-way reading, which 
no man ever knew better to employ than Moore. 

Among the best of Moore's comic compositions are the admirable 
letters entitled ' The Fudge Family in Paris,' supposed to be written 
by a party of English travellers at the French capital. It is com- 
posed of a hack-writer and spy, devoted to legitimacy, the Bourbons, 
and Lord Castlereagh; his son, a young dandy of the first water ; 
and his daughter, a sentimental damsel, rapturously fond of "romance 
and high bonnets and Madame Le Roy," in love with a Parisian 
linendraper, whom she has mistaken for one of the Bourbons in dis- 
guise. In this, as in his other comic productions, Moore shows 
great skill in introducing his own witty fancies without destroying 
the probability of the character who is made the unconscious mouth- 
piece for the author's good things. We ought not to forget O'Connor, 
the tutor and ' poor relation " of this egregious family, who is an 
ardent Bonapartist and Irish patriot. His letters are all serious, 
and contain violent declamations against the Holy Alliance, the 
British government, &c. ] but they are not in harmony with the gay 
and ludicrous tone of the work — to which they were probably in- 
tended to act as a foil or relief 

Another delightful collection of (pretended intercepted) letters, 
supposed to be from eminent persons, is entitled ' The Twopenny 
Post-Bag.' These, like the preceding, had a most unparalleled 
success. Before quitting this category of Moore's multifarious 
writings, we will mention his ^Rhymes on Cash, Corn, and 
Catholics,' the subject of which is sufficiently indicated by the title; 
his 'Fables for the Ploly Alliance/ a most spirited and ludicrous 



844 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVm. 



mockery of the legitimist doctrines; and a number of political 
squibs written in the slang or argot of the prizefighters. These 
offer a new proof of the elegance and versatility of Moore's talents; 
for though in them he has adopted a dialect associated with the 
lowest and most brutalizing of our national sports, he has handled 
it so that it is not only not offensive, but in the highest degree comic. 
Moore has used the jargon of the prize-ring so as to lose all its 
coarseness, and retain only its oddity and picturesque force. The 
narrative of the great fight between " Long Sandy and Georgy the 
Porpus " is in true sporting style, and Tom Cribb's Memorial to 
Congress ' contains passages of true poetic spirit. 

We now approach those works upon which will be founded this 
poet's widest and most enduring reputation — these are the 'Irish 
Melodies.' They are short lyrics, written to suit that vast treasury 
of beautiful national airs which form the peculiar pride, joy, and 
consolation of the Irish people. The task which you propose to 
me," says the poet, in his letter to Sir John Stevenson, the arranger 
of the music, " of adapting words to these airs, is by no means easy. 
The poet who would follow the various sentiments which they 
express must feel and understand that rapid fluctuation of spirits, 
that unaccountable mixture of gloom and levity, which composes 
the character of my countrymen, and has deeply tinged their music. 
Even in their liveliest strains we find some melancholy note intrude 
— some minor third, or flat seventh — which throws its shade as it 
passes, and makes even mirth interesting," We have in another 
place spoken of the Scottish national airs in terms of admiration 
which will appear exaggerated to those only who are unacquainted 
with them : the popular airs of Ireland are inferior to those of Scot- 
land neither in pathos, in gaiety, nor in inexhaustible variety. In 
Ireland the national music had been associated with coarse, rude, and 
mean words, often indecent and trivial in the highest degree; and 
thus by degrees many most beautiful airs, naturally expressive of the 
tenderest emotion, were deprived, by changes in their time, their 
key, and their accentuation, of their natural sense and meaning. 
When we see, among the titles by which the airs are known, such 
gross and vulgar appellations (generally worthy specimens of the 
pot-house compositions of which they are the beginning) as ' Paddy 
Snap,' ' The Black Joke,' 'The Captivating Youth,' 'Bob and Joan,' 
'Paddy Whack,' 'The Dandy 0,' and the like, we shall partly 
appreciate the service rendered by Moore to the music and poetry of 
his country. 

The 'Irish Melodies,' as songs, have never been surpassed in their 
particular kind. The versification is so exquisite, and executed with 
such delicacy of rhythm, that, on hearing them well read, we in- 
voluntarily and certainly conceive the tune, even though we may 
never have heard it. 



CHAP. XVm.] MOORE : LALLA ROOKH. 



345 



Viewed as poetry, these songs are among the most beautiful pro- 
ductions of literature. The diction is invariably perfect for elegance, 
neatness, and grace : it is truly Catullian, "simplex mundiiiis:" the 
words are never too big for the thought. They exhibit marks, not 
so much of labour and effort as of polish and care ; and where the 
author can prevail upon himself to resist his natural and Irish ten- 
dency to say something ingenious and conceited, their sentiment is 
as true and beautiful as their execution is felicitous. The great art 
in song-writing is to invent something that is original without being 
far-fetched ; and when we reflect upon the difficulty of finding un- 
touched and unhackneyed ideas on the few topics offered by patriot- 
ism, love, and pleasure (which compose nearly the whole curta 
supellex of the song- writer), we shall the more easily excuse Moore 
for having sometimes fallen into the fantastic and epigrammatic. 

If we compare Moore, as a lyric poet, with Burns, we shall acquire 
a much more elevated idea of the Irishman than by looking at him 
in a distinct point of view. The peasant poet of Scotland had the 
advantage of using a dialect which was simple and rustic without 
vulgarity, and all his finest compositions (with perhaps one or two 
remarkable exceptions) are written in that dialect; and it is difficult 
for a critic not practically acquainted with that dialect, to judge 
how far its use may have contributed to give Burns's poetry its charm 
of naivete, slyness, and pathos. Moore has not this advantage : his 
lyrics are models of the most refined and classical English. Both 
poets abound in beautiful love-passages; but the passion of the 
Scottish ploughman is rather too ardent and unscrupulous, while 
that of the Irish poet is often frittered away in cold and sparkling 
concetti, and thus loses in depth and tenderness more than it gains 
in ingenuity and elegance. 

In 1817 Moore published the celebrated Oriental romance ^Lalla 
Rookh' (Tulip-Cheek, so entitled from the name of the heroine). 
The structure of this work is truly original : it consists of a little 
romantic love-story, in which the beautiful daughter of Aurengzebe, 
during her journey into Bucharia, where she is to meet her betrothed 
husband, the prince of that country, falls in love with a young min- 
strel, who afterwards turns out to be her affianced bridegroom in 
disguise, and who thus, "having won her love as an humble minstrel, 
now amply deserved to enjoy it as a king.'^ This slender plot is 
related in that ingenious and sparkling prose of which Moore is a 
consummate master ; and nothing can exceed the gorgeousness, 
splendour, and pleasanty with which he describes all the details of 
Oriental life and scenery during the journey, and the inimitable cha- 
racter of Fadladeen the high chamberlain, a pedantic critic and 
accomplished courtier. This prose narrative, which, though very 
short, is one unceasing sparkle of brilliant antithesis and Eastern 
imagery, forms a kind of framing (like the prologues of Chaucer) 



846 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVIII. 



for the poems. These are four in number, ' The Veiled Prophet/ 
' The Fireworshippers/ ^ Paradise and the Peri/ and ' The Light of 
the Harem / and are supposed to be sung for the Princess's amuse- 
ment by the disguised Feramorz. Of the prose portion of this 
enchanting work it is impossible to speak too highly ; it is the very 
quintessence, the ^^Jine Jieur,^' the bloom and anihos of the gor- 
geous and voluptuous genius of the East : indeed its only fault is 
that it is too incessantly, too fatiguingly dazzling and splendid ; it is 
" more Eastern than the East itself,^' and is a concentration or con- 
densation of a thousand traits and strokes derived from a vast extent 
of Oriental reading. Jekyll said that " it was as good as riding on 
the back of a camel." The tales themselves are of various merit: 
^The Veiled Prophet,^ the most ambitious and the longest, does not 
appear to us the most successful. The narrative wants clearness, 
consistency, and event : the march of the story languishes, and the 
characters are too conventional and undefined to possess much 
power of interest. It is written in rhymed couplets, and there is 
far too incessant a profusion of ornament, which, though rich and 
appropriate, is so thickly sown that the effect of the whole is like 
that of some Oriental robe, in which the whole texture is concealed 
with an unbroken surface of pearl, and ruby, and diamond. 

' The Fireworshippers,' which is written in irregular octosyllabic 
verses, is less oppressive in its splendour, but it reminds the reader, 
and unfortunately for its success, of the minor Oriental narratives of 
Byron, as, for example, 'The Bride of Abydos.' On the whole, 
our favourite of the four poems is ' The Light of the Harem the 
subject is a love-quarrel and reconciliation between the Emperor 
Jehanghir and his beautiful favorite Nourmahal. In all these poems 
the songs introduced, and the lyric passages in general, are inexpressi- 
bly beautiful ; those sung by the fair houris in the artificial Paradise, 
where Azim is tempted to join the standard of Mokanna; many of 
the lyric movements in 'The Peri/ and, above all, the delicious 
incantations in 'The Light of the Harem,' are in Moore's very 
finest manner, and perhaps have never been equalled, except by him- 
self in the ' Irish Melodies.' 

Of 'The Loves of the Angels/ Moore's other Oriental poem, we 
have but very few words to say : it is generally found to be inferior 
to his other works; and though many passages of it breathe a rich 
and graceful perfume of passion, it is in characters and scenery too 
modern, so to say, too little imbued with a primeval spirit appropri- 
ate to the legend, and the personages have lost the pure and celestial 
lineaments of the angelic nature, without acquiring our sympathy in 
their punishment as men. How would Milton have maintained the 
solemn, ethereal, primeval character of those primeval days of Earth's 
first infancy, " when men began to multiply on the face thereof, and 
daughters were born unto them, and the sons of God saw the 



CHAP. XVIII.] 



BYRON. 



S47 



daughters of men that they were fair, and took them wives of all 
which they chose^' ! Moore's angels do not so much resemble the 
angels of the Bible, or those of Raphael, nor even those of Albert 
Dtirer, as the Scripture personages of a ballet at the Porte St. 
Martin : and indeed it is curious enough that this poem was composed 
at Paris. 

The remarks we have made on the ' Irish Melodies' will equally 
apply, though of course not always in the same degree, to various 
other collections of songs which this poet has given to the world : 
there are many beautiful productions among his ' National Songs,' 
written for a selection of airs of all countries ; and the ' Evenings in 
G-reece,' and other similar works, may be examined by the reader 
with a certainty of finding many gems of grace, tenderness, and 
harmony. We have now to say a few words of Moore as a prose- 
writer. He has distinguished himself both in fiction and in biography 
— in the former as the author of the beautiful tale of ' The Epicurean/ 
and in the latter in a variety of works, of which the most important 
are the ' Lives' of Lord Byron, his intimate friend and brother-poet, 
and of his illustrious countryman Sheridan, the British Beaumar- 
chais. 

' The Epicurean' is a tale of antique manners, the scene being 
laid among the primitive Christians, chiefly in Egypt, and termi- 
nating with the martyrdom of a converted priestess, whose character, 
as well as that of the hero, a young Athenian, is beautifully sketched. 
The book contains many strikiDg and poetical episodes, particularly 
a descent into the subterraneous temples of the Egyptian deities, 
and a revelation of the arts by which the pagan hierarchy deceived 
the candidates for initiation in their unholy mysteries. The night 
voyage on the Nile is also powerful and picturesque, and the style 
of the work, though still sufficiently gorgeous and fanciful, is not so 
overloaded with ornament and conceits as the prose parts of ' Lalla 
Rookh.' It also exhibits a profusion of curious erudition. 

The two ' Lives' which we have mentioned are written on that 
plan which is immeasurably the best for this kind of work. They 
are not 'Lives,^ but 'Memoirs :' the author allows the subject of the 
biography to tell his own story; and the mass of the book consists 
of extracts from the journals and correspondence of the person 
whose life we are reading. Moore has performed his task with the 
penetration of the critic, and with the gentleness and enthusiasm of 
the friend : and nothing in it is more admirable than the warm and 
generous justice rendered to Byron by a contemporary and most 
popular poet, and the total absence of anything like jealousy or envy. 

It is impossible not to confess that Byron was the most extraordi- 
nary man of his age, and perhaps the most extraordinary person in 
the modern history of Europe. Striking and not uninstructive 
parallels have been drawn between him and Napoleon, and even 
29 



348 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVIII. 



between him and Groethe. All three were eminently the embodi- 
ment of the period of crisis, literary or political, which characterised 
their age. No sooner is Napoleon installed in the Tuileries than he 
begins to revive all the ceremonies and exploded offices of the ancient 
court of France ; and, by what would seem (but only to a superficial 
glance) a similar caprice, Byron, " the young Napoleon of the realms 
of rhyme,' ^ has no sooner mounted with the step of a giant to the 
uncontested throne of his country's literature, than his first manifestos 
proclaim his adherence to those canons of taste and principles of 
criticism, the total and unsparing annihilation of which was the 
particular mission of his power. Though the greatest of the 
romanticists, Byron incessantly insisted on the superiority of the 
classicist school ; and, whether from blindness, or from that perverse 
contempt for received opinions which so strongly coloured his charac- 
ter, the author of ^ Childe Harold' and 'Lara' affected to consider 
Pope as his superior in poetry. " It was all Yirgil then," says he j 
*'it is all Claudian with us now:" and he has compared the two 
classes of literature respectively to a Grecian temple, and to a glitter- 
ing but barbarous pagoda. He affected to be prouder of his cold 
and formal 'Imitations of Horace' than of those immortal poems 
by which he revolutionised the taste of Europe. 

This extraordinary man was born in London on the 22nd of 
January, 1788. His mother was a Scottish heiress, who had in an 
evil hour married a ruined profligate, from whom she had soon been 
obliged to separate ; and the early days of the young poet were 
passed chiefly in Scotland, amid the miseries of poverty and neglect, 
and exposed to all the dangers arising from the almost insane charac- 
ter of his unhappy mother — capricious alternations of frantic fond- 
ness and unreasoning rage. He was eleven years old when the death 
of his grand-uncle put him in possession of the title, and made him 
the representative of one of the most ancient Norman houses of the 
English aristocracy. The hereditary estate, Newstead Abbey, not 
far from Nottingham, was situated in the middle of the most beautiful 
rural scenery, in a district dignified by the legends of " Bobin Hood 
and Little John" and the fair Forest of Sherwood; but the property 
was dilapidated by the follies and vices of his ancestors. However 
favourable may have been all these circumstances to foster that union 
of passion and sensibility which composes the poetical character, and 
to inspire and develop that mixture of pride, melancholy, and haughty 
repining which characterises the poetry of this great man, they were 
indubitably not favourable either to his happiness or to his virtue. 
An early and ill-requited passion came, too, to throw an additional 
tint of gloom over this lofty and mournful heart; and his boyish love 
for Mary Chaworth was afterwards to be immortalised in verses 
whose sad and imperishable beauty only renders their sincerity too 
painfully apparent. 



CHAP, xvni.] 



BTRON : ENGLISH BARDS. 



349 



His prospects in life being considerably improved by bis accession 
to tbe peerage, young Byron passed some time at Harrow School, 
where he made himself chiefly remarkable by the intensity and 
almost feminine fervour of his schoolboy friendships ; and afterwards 
at Trinity College, Cambridge, where the tradition goes that he 
occupied the same rooms as had been formerly inhabited by Newton. 
At the university his life was neither very happy nor very moral, 
but both here and at Harrow he continued to indulge the same 
voracious appetite for all manner of miscellaneous reading which had 
distinguished him almost from his infancy. It is singular enough 
that his predilections should have lain, in a great measure, in the 
department of Oriental history. Of classical learning, at least of an 
accurate and technical kind, he never possessed a great share ; and he 
has left uSj in many passages of his works, strong indications of the 
weariness and disgust with which a bad system of education had 
associated, in his mind, the finest passages of ancient literature. 

It was in 1807 that Byron first appeared before the public as an 
author. The 'Hours of Idleness,' a small volume of fugitive 
poems, of no intrinsic value whatever, and (what is singular enough) 
giving no indication of his future powers or style of thought, was 
treated with extreme severity in a memorable criticism of the 
' Edinburgh Review.^ Byron's rage at this contemptuous and sarcastic 
article, and the terrific revenge which he afterwards took, has induced 
many people to consider this famous criticism as a notable instance 
either of malignity or ignorance. But it seems to us that this is an 
error and an injustice. The criticism in itself, though not perhaps 
written in the best possible taste, is fair and reasonable enough ; for 
the poems are exceedingly weak and commonplace. The true culpa- 
bility of the reviewer lies in the selection, for a subject of his stric- 
tures, of a work so trifling and unimportant. The critique threw 
Byron into a passion of rage and indignation, and he shortly after- 
wards printed his satire of ' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' a 
fierce and indiscriminate piece of retaliation, in which he revenges 
his self-love upon nearly the whole of the literary men of that day. 
This poem, as might have been expected from the sincere anger which 
dictated it, is in many parts very powerfully written, and exhibits, 
if not a complete foretaste of all the qualities which distinguish his 
peculiar genius, at least the earnestness, intensity, and admirable 
clearness of expression, which form chief elements in his future 
productions. It is equally to the honour of the satirist and his 
victims in this ebullition of youthful indignation, that he afterwards 
became the warm friend and correspondent of many of the persons 
whom he had attacked — of Jefl'rey, for example (editor of the obnox- 
ious Review), of Scott, of Moore, and many others. 

After inflicting this fierce vengeance the poet travelled for two 
years, and embodied, in the first and second cantos of * Childe 



350 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVIH. 



Harold/ which appeared on his return in 1812, the impressions of 
beauty, tenderness, and sublimity which the scenes of Spain and 
Greece were so likely to make upon such a mind. The appearance 
of this admirable poem placed the author, instantly and for ever, at 
the head of all the poets of his time. The remainder of 'Childe 
Harold' appeared at considerable intervals; the fourth (and last) 
canto not until 1818. For this reason we think it advisable to 
defer our remarks upon this work till we can discuss the whole of it 
at once. The first and second cantos were followed in rapid and 
brilliant succession by those inimitable romantic narratives which 
form an era in literature, and which proved that Byron's genius had 
now found a new and vast source of passion, interest, and sentiment. 
This source was principally the East, and modern Greece in particu- 
lar. Familiarised as we now are, and chiefly familiarised by the 
genius of Byron himself, with the scenery and costume of this 
region, we can hardly form an idea of the impression which must 
have been made by the first appearance of ^ The Giaour' and ' The 
Bride of Abydos,' ' The Corsair' and '■ Lara ;' they produced in the 
public of England, and indirectly throughout Europe, an enthusiasm 
which was little short of madness. That deep and spiritual percep- 
tion of beauty, that mixture of pride and tenderness, of fervour and 
voluptuous softness, the rapid alternation of the fiercest energy with 
the loftiest and most pathetic meditation — all these made Byron as 
peculiarly the poet of Greece, as they rendered Greece, the just 
patrimony of Byron's genius. Most of these narrative poems were 
written in the irregular-rhymed metres which Scott had brought into 
fashion. They have rarely any pretensions to ingenuity of plot or 
connected development of incident; and are, indeed, little else than 
powerful embodiments of terrible situations — culminating instants 
— in Oriental existence. They are not, in short, dramas, nor hardly 
scenes, of the life of man : they are moments of intense and tremen- 
dous passion. They have no variety of character : they contain but 
two figures, sometimes slightly relieved against a few conventional 
and monotonous characters, but rendered invariably impressive and 
affecting by the scenery and circumstances which surround them, 
and by the unequalled intensity, directness, and pathos with which 
their passions are set before us. The male character is the same as 
we behold in Childe Harold, in Conrad, in Lara, in Alp, and even 
in the tragedies — a character unnatural, impossible, and inconsistent 
in itself, but painted with a terrible force and distinctness. Both 
Scott and Byron excel in description ; but with this difference, that 
Scott contents himself with the external manifestation of the object, 
whose most picturesque and striking lines he selects and reproduces 
with an admirable energy and vividness ; or, if these are allowed to 
acquire any colouring from the poet's mind, that tint is seldom of 
any unusual or profound character. No passions, indeed, can be 



CHAP, xvin.] 



BYRON : ROMANTIC POEMS. 



851 



said to colour Scott's descriptions, except occasionally the entlmsiasm 
of chivalric daring, the glow of patriotic exultation, or the tender- 
ness of the domestic affections. Byron is the exact reverse of all 
this. Not only is every manifestation of his sublime genius inti- 
mately and inseparately connected vrith the peculiar moral constitu- 
tion of the individual, but the very existence of that genius can only 
be conceived as inseparable from that constitution. In him it is not 
possible to separate the artist from the man. The fact is, that the 
character of Byron is intensity; that is to say, intense earnestness 
and sincerity : and this quality is so rare in art or in literature, that 
we are content to purchase it even at the price of monotony. In 
the infancy of society — that is, at the periods of great physical 
agitation — poetry, like art, preserves its external or superficial 
character : it speaks to the eye, and to the imagination. But as man, 
or as mankind, grows older, and ho '^puts away childish things,'^ he 
turns his eye inward upon the mysterious workings of his own moral 
nature, and poetry becomes searching, analytic, deeply passionate. 
Byron's writings are, in this point of view, as complete a manifesta- 
tion of the nineteenth century, as the ^ Iliad' and the Odyssey' are 
of the heroic, or as Scott's poems are a revival of the chivalric age. 
It is singular how almost all Byron's human characters resolve 
themselves into moments and situations of intense but stationary 
interest. Alp gazing on the cloud, whose passage is to decide his 
everlasting fate ; Lara smiling sadly at the dancers ; Manfred drinking 
in the loveliness of nature, which can, however, bring no consolation 
to his despair — these are delineations which will occur to every one ; 
and the narrative or dialogue in which these conceptions are intro- 
duced is of the same stationary, unprogressive character ] there is no 
evolution, nothing advances. 

' The Corsair' and ' Lara' are two prominent adventures in the 
life of the same person ; for it is evident that Lara and the page 
Kaled can be no other than Conrad and Grulnare. These two poems 
are remarkable as being written in the rhymed heroic couplet of Pope 
and Dryden, instead of the irregular lyric measures of the other 
romantic tales. Byron has handled the difficult instrument with 
perfect mastery. In the former of the two poems, the song of the 
pirates is inexpressibly vigorous, and full of wild, savage energy ; but 
the analysis of Conrad's character is generally considered as the 
finest passage, and the death of Medora as an unequalled instance 
of Byron's power 

"To ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears." 

No author ever possessed so little of the dramatic power — of that 
going out of oneself to create — of that faculty of getting entirely 
rid of one's own idiosyncrasy, which Shakspeare possessed to a 
degree in no sense short of supernatural. In fact, it is to this con- 
29* 



852 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVIII. 



centratioa of thoughts in himself, to the very incapacity of going out 
of the circle of his own moral being, that Byron owes his specific 
character as a poet. 

It was this portion of Byron's life which we might call the hap- 
piest, if glory and pleasure were enough to make life happy. He 
was now the idol of society, considered facile princeps'^ of tlie 
living poets of his country, and boldly compared even with the 
greatest names among the mighty dead;, and about this time he con- 
tracted his marriage with Miss Milbanke. The tale of this truly 
melancholy episode is soon told : after living a short time with his 
lady, between whom and her illustrious husband there seems to have 
existed no disagreements not to be explained by the very embarrass- 
ed state of their fortune, the relations, and particularly the mother, 
of Lady Byron, appear to have induced her to separate from her 
husband, not only (as far as appears) without assigning any sufficient 
cause, but without communicating to Byron himself any plausible 
pretext ; for he solemnly affirmed, until his dying day, that he never 
knew the cause of separation. He soon hurried away once more 
from England, with the hope of forgetting or alleviating his pain 
amid the loveliness of foreign climes, and in those beautiful regions 
immortalised by ancient glory, but to which his genius had given a 
new enchantment. But, before his departure, he gave to the world 
' The Siege of Corinth' and ' Parisina,' — short, wild, irregular poems, 
in which his characteristic merits are splendidly perceptible. In the 
former, the apparition which visits Alp with a last chance of salva- 
tion is a scene nobly contrasted with the warlike fury of the storm- 
ing of the devoted city; and in the second, pathos of the deepest and 
most hopeless kind is embodied in descriptions and reflection so ex- 
quisitely touching that we forget the horror of crime and vengeance 
shed over the meagre story, and we feel no want of that strong 
picturesque situation in which this poet's romantic tales are rarely 
deficient. The opening lines of 'Parisina' are consummate in deep 
internal beauty, and are worthy of being compared even with the 
ghost scene of the siege, or the inimitable attack and capture of 
Corinth by the Turks. 

The restless pang of misery which was now fixed for ever to thirj 
noble heart again drove him abroad. In six months he sent to Eng- 
land the third canto of ' Childe Harold,' and the exquisite little 
poem of ^The Prisoner of Chillon.' Respecting the latter of these, 
we need not make any very detailed remarks. Story or dramatic 
interest it has none, but the effect of grief and imprisonment upon 
the characters of the three brothers is painted with a variety of touch 
as strong as it is delicate, and the death of the youngest is a haunt- 
ing image of quiet, patient, uncomplaining hopelessness. We behold 
the captives, we see "the iron entering into their souls;" and the 
feverish and fantastic imaginings of the survivor^ his reflections on 



CHAP. XVIII.] 



BYEON : MANFRED. 



353 



his brotiier's grave, and his ivelcoming of the bird which comes to 
\^sit hiiD, are deeply-imagined indications of that weakening and re- 
vulsion of the mind which follows hopeless and irremediable sorrow 
— the recoil of the o'erstrained spring. The view of happy nature 
without is exquisitely relieved and contrasted against the cold dull 
monotony of the prison, and is like a little glimpse of blue sky 
framed by the grating of a dungeon. 

It was about this period of his career (1817) that Byron began to 
write dramas; and the first work of this nature, and probably the 
best also, was, as might have been expected, but little removed in 
form from the contemplative poems which had gained him his 
greatest fame. This was the drama of 'Manfred.' Byron's genius 
was singularly ill adapted for scenic writing, principally from that 
want of variety with which we have reproached all his attempts at 
the creation of character. ' Manfred ' is no more a play for the 
stage than ' Faust,' and the author has repeatedly insisted that this 
(and many other of his dramas) were never composed with the 
remotest view to representation." The truth is, that this work is 
dramatic only in form ; there are no events, properly so called, there 
are no characters, and there is no dialogue. The so-called play, in 
short, is little else than a series of grand and majestic soliloquies, 
and the form of dialogue is only assumed to enable the author to put 
into the mouth of a few other persons (who have nothing whatever 
distinctive and characteristic) remarks which give Manfred the occa- 
sion of' describing and re-describino; his own sublime ao-onies. The 
work therefore is much less a drama than the ' Prometheus ' of iEs- 
chylus, and little more so than the ' Paradise Lost.' It bears a strong 
superficial resemblance in many points to the 'Faust,' but a very 
slight examination will show the difference between these two awful 
productions. ' Faust' is a cold, cynical, cruel, deliberate anatomy 
of the vanities of human virtue and knowledge; the hero is little 
more than inert matter in the hands of the sneering fiend, who plays 
with him as a juggler with his balls. Mephistophiles is the real 
hero of the poem, as Satan is of the ' Paradise Lost ;' Faust is but 
the weak and erring Adam of his vain Eden of human perfecti- 
bility. But Manfred is a haughty and regal spirit, whose tremen- 
dous agonies have endowed him with power over the powers of 
Nature, Destiny, and Ahrimanes. The abstract and unworldly fea- 
tures of this awful conception are softened and humanised by his 
deep and unfailing love for nature and his longing remembrances of 
the earthly passion of his youth. The character resembles those 
Alpine solitudes amid which he utters his sublime woes ; it is the 
cold and glittering unfruitful glacier, bordered with the mournful 
flowers of the mountain rhododendron ; it is the icy peak, thunder- 
shattered and inaccessible, but glowing in the rosy hues of Love's 
departed sun. X\\ the soliloc|uies in this immortal work are full of 



854 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [OHAP. XVITI. 



the rarest beauty ; that spoken on the summit of the Jungfrau, the 
evocation of the Witch of the Alps, and that grand and pathetic 
passage in which the mind of the lofty victim, now calmed by the 
hope of approaching death, recalls the majestic sadness of ruined 
Rome. The songs of the Spirits are indescribably beautiful as 
lyrics ; and in one overwhelming scene (that in which the phantom 
of the dead Astarte is called up to answer Manfred before the throne 
of Ahriman) it cannot be denied that Byron has shown a power 
almost dramatic. 

This splendid work appeared with ^The Lament of Tasso/ and 
was followed in the succeeding year by the fourth and concluding 
canto of ' Childe Harold/ about which poem we shall now say a few 
words. In selecting as the medium of a contemplative and descrip- 
tive work the nine-lined stanza of Spenser (itself a modification of 
the ottava rima of Tasso and Ariosto), Byron at first determined to 
convey something of that quaint and antiquated air which his great 
master had adopted in ^ The Faerie Queene.' This suits well enough 
with Spenser's subject, a tale of romantic chivalrous adventure; but 
even in ' The Faerie Queene ' the use of old and obsolete language 
was carried rather too far. Byron attempted (it is not easy to say 
with what object) to do the same; the very title of the poem — 
' Childe ' signifying, in our old English legendary language, hnight 
— is a proof and example of this. But we feel neither surprise nor 
regret that he soon abandoned this forced masquerade of diction. 
^Childe Harold^ derives its wonderful power over our sympathies 
from the admirable variety, splendour, and beauty of its descriptions 
of scenery, spots of eternal and historical interest, and the great 
triumphs of human art and genius. These have no natural coherence 
or connection, and are only united into one complete whole by the 
grand tone of mournful reflection in which the impressions are em- 
bodied, the atmosphere of lofty sadness through which the various 
objects are viewed. Harold is an exhausted and disappointed liber- 
tine, who wanders over the earth, beholding its fairest and most 
exhilarating scenes with the calm and abstracted glance of one who 
no longer either hopes or fears, but who is sometimes capable of 
being roused for a moment by contempt or admiration, by the base 
or the beautiful, by patriotism, by despair. Neither the English nor 
assuredly any other literature had produced any passages of descrip- 
tion at all comparable to the pictures of nature, man, and society 
which crowd these four wondrous cantos — the plaintive loveliness of 
Greece; the stern splendour of Mussulman dominion; the scenes 
of heroic struggling for Spanish and Portuguese independence ; the 
cataracts and peaks of Switzerland; the phantom splendours of 
Venice ; and all the wonders of antique and mediaeval art. It is of 
course impossible for the reader, in spite of Byron^s eager and 
reiterated declamations, to avoid identifying the hero of this great 



CHAP. XVIIT.] EYRON: CHILDE HAROLD — EEPrO. 



355 



work with the personal and individual character of its author. The 
Ditter and scornful declamations against military glory and intellec- 
tual supremacy, the invectives against the hollowness of modern 
society, do indeed sometimes wear a somewhat suspicious air not only 
of sophistry, but of affectation ; but it is to the eternal honour of 
this great genius that his enthusiasm for what is really good, noble, 
or beautiful is always stamped with an air of deep and fervent 
sincerity. The mask is that of Mephistophiles, but the features 
which it conceals are the lineaments of an archangel. The poem 
begins and ends with the ocean; to whose majestic undulations, to 
whose changing aspects of gloom and sunshine, of calm and tempest, 
of melancholy grandeur and immeasurable depth, it bears no faint 
similitude, and of whose many-voiced harmonies its varied music is 
no unworthy echo. 

Together with the fourth canto of ^Childe Harold' appeared 
^ Beppo,' a light, half-playful, half-sarcastic tale of modern Italian 
society, in which Byron gave the first earnest of his powers as a 
comic writer. It is composed in the easy stanza employed by Pulci 
and the more ludicrous Italian poets, and is a consummate example 
of easy familiar grace, occasionally rising into pathos and tenderness. 
The story is as trifling as possible, being, a not very moral carnival 
adventure ; but what an abundant and transparent flow of refined 
chat and badinage, with only just that slight touch of satire and 
pathos which suffices to give it pungency I The somewhat lax 
morality we pardon with a smile, by attributing it to the custom of 
Venetian society • and we no more think of directing the artillery 
of moral declamation against the lady and her dilettante cicisbeo, 
than of levelling a cannon against a pair of sporting butterflies. 

For a considerable time, and with various intervals of travelling, 
eyen down to 1821, Byron resided in Italy, principally at Venice 
and Ravenna, steadily and uninterruptedly adding stone after stone 
to that pyrg^mid of glory in which he has eternised his name. His 
private life, during the whole latter part of his career, was neither 
very moral nor very regular. Driven from his own country by his 
embarrassed circumstances, endowed with even more than the poet's 
impressibility and passion, this great man plunged into a life of dissi- 
pation neither dignified in itself, nor even excusable by the lax tone 
of Italian manners at that time. His productions however continued 
to be poured forth with as much variety, splendour, and eflect as 
ever, though one particular department of them (the tragedies) were 
rather striking, bold, and original in their manner, than in perfect 
harmony with the peculiar style which had acquired him such fame. 

The first work of this epoch which we shall mention is the tale of 
'Mazeppa,' full of vigour, passion the more impressive from its air, 
of being bridled in and restrained, and rough rapid descriptions of 
suffering, terror, and revenge. The mise en scene of this narrative 



356 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVIII. 



is admirable : it is a story of his early days told by the fierce and 
rugged veteran to amuse Charles XII. at a bivouac after the dreadful 
defeat of Poltava : and the character of the rude old hetman (who, 
however, in no way resembles the real historical Mazepa) is in perfect 
harmony with the scene, the circumstances, and the savage nature 
of his youthful adventures. 

The tragedies are six in number, and can be divided into two 
categories — first, those of a purely abstract and imaginary kind ; and, 
secondly, the dramas more strictly historical : the former class may 
be considered as productions of the same phase in the poet's intellec- 
tual life which produced 'Manfred,' and the latter to have been 
written under the combined influence of Alfieri and Shelley. In 
the one class are placed ' Cain,^ ' Heaven and Earth,' and ' The 
Deformed Transformed;' in the other, * Marino Faliero,' 'Sardanapa- 
lus,' Werner,' and 'The Two Foscari.' Of the first-mentioned three, 
' Cain' is undoubtedly the finest, whether we consider the tremendous 
boldness of the sentiments, the pictures of primeval existence, now 
awful and now exquisitely lovely, which it contains, or the tremen- 
dous agencies which are embodied in its personages. It is little else 
than a fearful piece of special pleading, in which the goodness of 
Grod is brought into question : but if we examine the finest (and con- 
sequently most dangerous) dialogues in which this terrific thesis is 
argued between Cain and Lucifer, we shall discover that there is no 
real dialogue, and that the majestic" speeches are nothing else but 
monologues in reality, and all tending to the same result. The 
argument against Divine goodness is really an argument in which 
the speakers are both on the same side. But the glimpses of prime- 
val life which we get through the clouds and darkness of Cain's 
haughty scepticism, the picture of little Enoch's sleeping infancy, 
and the gloomy grandeur of those tremendous phantoms which 
Lucifer shows to his questioner in the realms of space peopled with 
the ghosts of premundane existences — all these are in the loftiest 
vein of conception, though their merit is far more lyrical than 
dramatic : perhaps the only really dramatic passage in the mystery 
is the last line, in which Cain, with a short, simple, and terrific 
exclamation of remorse and despair, is sent forth to wander miserable 
and restless over the world. ' Heaven and Earth' is altogether lyric, 
and is much feebler than either ' Cain' or ' Manfred :' it seems to us 
a not very happy imitation of Shelley's abstract and cloudy manner, 
but without his exquisite diction, imagery, and unequalled melody 
of versification. In ' The Deformed Transformed' Byron has given 
a bitter and savage expression to his recollections of his own deformity 
and unhappy childhood. There is much satire and invective too, in 
the drama, on the folly of mankind, and on the atrocious puerilities 
of military glory; but the only passage which remains in the reader's 
memory is the evocation of the forms of the beautiful and wise of 



CHAP, xvni.] 



BYRON : DRAMAS. 



357 



the antique world, wlien the Stranger offers to the Deformed the 
choice of a new body. 

The more purely historical dramas are undoubtedly fine and dignified 
compositions, on the model, not of Shakspeare but of Alfieri. Between 
Byron and the great modern reformer of Italian literature there were 
innumerable points of resemblance, both moral and intellectual ; and 
those classical tendencies of Byron's mind to which we have alluded 
some pages back doubtless received new food from the strong admira- 
tion he felt for the fiery, haughty, sublime author of ' Filippo.^ We 
doubt whether Byron ever felt a very warm or sincere sympathy 
with Shakspeare, as a dramatic artist ; there ever lurked in his mind 
a sort of suspicion that the unaffected and irregular richness of the 
Elizabethan stage was rather a defect than a merit — that its admirable 
ease, grace, vivacity, and nature, could not compensate for the stern 
dignity of classical tragedy and perhaps a consciousness, too, of his 
own want of flexibility and animation of dialogue, and of variety 
and naturalness in the conception of characters, made him voluntarily 
adopt those severe and rigid forms which might palliate or conceal 
those defects. Thus his selfJove, as an author, was masked under a 
natural or affected preference of those models which alone he could 
hope to imitate. This was natui-al enough, and therefore our wisest 
proceeding is to admire the beauties of his tragedies, with their 
monotony of style, their languid march of incident, and their repeti- 
tion of a few types of character, their unities and their gravity, 
without making any invidious comparisons between their somewhat 
formal grandeur and the inexhaustible glories of our elder drama. 
The man of true tast^ is always catholic in his admirations — he can 
find intense pleasure in the regal gardens of Versailles without 
losing his relish for the dewy glades of a primeval forest. 

In 'Marino Faliero' the principal defect is the insufficiency of such 
an event as the supposed insult offered by Steno to the Doge to excite 
in such a mind as that of the heroic veteran the tempest of passion 
which agitates his soul from the first act to the last. The passion 
is also somewhat monotonous in itself, and Faliero is too often lashed 
into wrath rather by his own eloquence than by the suggestions or 
provocations from without. This will be proved by comparing the 
character with Othello or with Lear. The conversations between the 
fierce old Doge and his young wife, though languid, are very beautiful ; 
and the conspiracy-scene is a fine specimen of declamation — but decla- 
mation is rather the vice than the beauty of the French and Italian 
drama; and even the noble energy and force of such passages as the 
famous curse with which the Doge takes leave of life and Venice 
bear too strongly impressed this air of rhetoric, not passion. The 
description of the ball, by the senator Lioni, is exquisitely luxuriant, 
but totally out of place in a tragedy ; there is nothing scenic in this 
play but the scene in which the illustrious conspirator is awaiting the 



358 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVIIT. 



sound of the great bell of St. Mark which is to give the signal for 
the massacre. In this the interest is really worked up to a breath- 
less intensity of expectation. 

On the stage the most successful of Byron's tragedies are ^ Sarda- 
napulus' and 'Werner;' but the latter derives all its eflfect from the 
interest of the plot, and the uncertainty, so artfully kept up, as to 
the real assassin of Strahlenheim. The language is throughout little 
better than dull prose. In fact this play is nothing else but the 
admirable prose narrative in Miss Lee's 'Canterbury Tales,' entitled 
' The Hungarian's Story,' arranged into acts and scenes, and clumsily 
cut up into phrases of equal length, by courtesy called verse. ' Sar- 
danapulus' has much higher merit: the character of Myrrha, the 
Ionian slave, is exquisitely and tenderly touched ; and though Sarda- 
napalus himself, with his luxurious good-natured effeminacy, and his 
moments of heroic courage and careless energy, is little else but an 
expansion of the antithesis of the historian and the satirist, he is 
striking and interesting on the stage. 

Of ' The Two Foscari ' we have only to remark the monstrous 
improbability of the sentiment which is the root of the action — the 
frantic and unreasonable love of country in Jacopo which drags him 
back from exile to die by lingering torture in ungrateful Venice. 
But nevertheless it is impossible not to sympathise with the despair 
and agony of the Doge, and our heart, though not our reason, takes 
part in his sorrow when the desolate old man, the victim of the im- 
placable revenge of Loredano, throws himself to die upon the corpse 
of his unhappy son. 

In all these tragedies, though none of them are unadorned with 
some noble and majestic declamatory passages, or with some descrip- 
tion executed with Byron's never-failing intense and inward senti- 
ment of beauty, the general run of the dialogue is singularly prosaic 
and sober : we perpetually meet with long passages of the plainest 
prose, and the line frequently ends with of, to, with, or some such 
wretched monosyllable, while the sense is so often carried, without 
any pause, into the next line, that it is only when we read that we 
can perceive it to be intended for metre. This, in a versifier so 
consummate as Byron was when he pleased, is a great blemish, and 
shows how little he had studied the admirable class of dramatists 
whose external forms he imitated in these plays. Corneille and 
Racine might have taught him, and Alfieri too, that the highest 
severity was, not incompatible with the most finished and elaborate 
versification. 

We have now only to speak of that extraordinary poem which is 
the most complete embodiment of all the varied discordant elements 
of this wonderful genius ; nay, which is a full expression or reflec- 
tion of the age in which he lived. In ' Don Juan,' as in a mirror, 
we sec imaged all the features of modern society, its earnestness and 



CHAP. XTOI.] 



BYRON : DON JUAN. 



359 



its mockery, its scepticism and its faith, its sublimity and its mean- 
ness. The prevailing vice of our age — the haunting demon, is cant: 
and of cant Byron was the most implacable, active, and unresting 
enemy : cant in all its myriad disguises — the cant of religion, the 
cant of morality, the cant of patriotism, the cant of literature — it 
vras his chief aim and passion to attack and overthrow. The first 
five cantos of the poem were written at Venice and Eavenna, and 
ten more were gradually added, chiefly at Pisa. The work is abso- 
lutely without plot or intrigue : it is a ' Gril Bias' in easy verse — a 
series of varied and almost unconnected adventures. Don Juan is a 
young Spanish grandee, whose early education is desciibed with 
touches of the sharpest and most resistless satire. These keen razor- 
strokes, though bearing reference to the hollow hypocrisy and Tar- 
tufferie of our age, are frequently directed specially against Lady 
Byron and her family, and never did genius take a more terrible 
revenge for real or imaginary wrong. The young Don engages in an 
amour with a married woman somewhat older than himself, and is 
obliged to leave Spain. The ship founders at sea, and, after dread- 
ful sufferings, the hero is thrown half-drowned and starving on a 
little island in the jEgean, where he is succoured by Haidds, a G-reek 
girl — one of Byron's sweetest conceptions. In the midst of the 
wedding festivities, Lambro, the father of Haidee, a pirate, suddenly 
returns ; Juan is disarmed and put on board his vessel, and carried 
to Constantinople, where he is sold for a slave, and is bought by 
Gulbeyaz, the haughty and voluptuous favourite of the Sultan. 
After some admirable but rather warmly-coloured scenes in the 
seraglio, Juan escapes, and we find him, with Johnson, an English- 
man who had been the companion of his captivity, arriving at the 
Russian camp before Izmail, just as Suvorofi: comes to take command 
of the besiegers ; and we have a most vivid and terrific description 
of the storming of that devoted place. Juan afterwards passes some 
time at the court of Catherine II., by whom he is sent on a secret 
diplomatic mission to England. AYe then have some most severe 
and lively descriptions of English society, in which aU its weak and 
rotten points are anatomised with merciless severity ; and we at last 
accompany the hero to a villeggiatura, or summer- party, at a great 
country-house (a noble description of Newstead Abbey is introduced 
here), and we are admitted into the very focus of aristocratic life. 
Just as we are about to meet with what promises to be a piquant 
adventure, the poem abruptly concludes. 

The primary characteristic of this extraordinary creation is a rapid 
and incessant alternation of the severest satire and the gayest and 
most comic impressions with images the most solemn or pathetic. 
The artifice of the poet consists in passing without a moment's prepa- 
ration, without any intermediate state of transition, from the loftiest 
to the humblest images, from the most refined to the most vulgar, 
30 



360 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVIII. 



from the bitterest sneer to the tenderest enthusiasm, from the grin 
of Mephistophiles to the agonised gaze of the Niobe. The critics 
have all complained of this^ but we think without reason, for it is in 
this that consists the poem: — 

" Aliter non fit, Avite, liber." 

It is undeniably true that this close apposition of the ridiculous 
and the sublime, of the beautiful and the hideous, gives an air of 
heartless mockery to the satire, and of insincerity to the tender- 
ness ; but we must remember that such apposition and inconsistency 
is the very type of our modern society : the moral of the work lies 
deeper than the surface, and we must not apply to this vast structure 
of irony and sadness (a sadness deeper for the irony) the mere rules 
of literary criticism : if we complain, it should not be of the mocking 
spirit of the poem, but of the hypocrisy, cant, and hollowness of 
the age. 

It is written in a kind of easy ottava rima, as admirably suited to 
the purpose as the Spenserian harmonies of ' Childe Harold ' are to 
the subject and character of that splendid work ; and it is a curious 
and instructive proof of Byron's admirable skill and exquisite ear, 
that in two poems so different in tone he should have used a metre 
nearly alike in form, but so admirably varied in feeling and rhythm, 
that the effect is perfect in each case. In ' Don Juan' we have the 
perfection of easy, familiar, lively conversation ; the English is as 
pure and idiomatic as is conceivable — the style, transparency itself. 
Of humour this wonderful poem contains no trace, but it is through- 
out sparkling with an exhaustless current of wit — wit of the cold 
and caustic character of Beaumarchais and Voltaire. Modern 
Europe, after the frenzy of war and revolution, feels the collapse, 
the exhaustion, and the weariness, which are the natural consequence 
and reaction of violent excitement — the headache and nausea which 
follow the debauch, the cold shuddering indifference which succeeds 
to the paroxysm of sensuality. Modern society has acquired a 
smooth varnish of civilized propriety, and the satire of Byron, like 
a concentrated acid, burned off and ate away this superficial polish, 
showing the weak and cracked places concealed beneath. Of the 
richness, abundance, and intensity of the wit in this poem, there 
can be but one opinion ] the absence of humour is, we think, as 
evident. All his satire is caustic — all is negative, not reconstructive : 
in the loftiest, the holiest, the tenderest emotions of the mind he 
shows us a selfish and contemptible ingredient. Such an element 
there assuredly is in all human feelings ; for man is a composite and 
complicated being, and the taint of self defiles his most elevated 
sentiments. 

"Quidquid agunt homines, votum, timer, ira, voluptas, 
Gaudia, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli." 



C3HAP. XVIII.] 



BYRON: HIS DEATH. 



361 



The secret of the 'poioer of this astonishing work is, as we have 
said before, the incredible facility with which the poet passes from 
the most tender or exalted feeling to the bitterest and most sneering 
mockery. The sarcasm is only the more intense from being uttered 
with a graceful smile and with the epigrammatic polish of refined 
society. But perpetually as the mocker is at our side, pouring into 
our ear, with the smooth voice of Mephistophiles, the heart-harden- 
ing sophistries and tlie heart-piercing verities of artificial life, the 
poet is never absent either ; it is impossible to surpass those delinea- 
tions (so numerous and so beautiful) of the lovely and terrible scenes 
of nature, of the intoxication of youthful love, and the splendid 
gallantries of courts and camps. What truly poetical figures in 
Haidee, in Grulbeyaz, in Aurora Raby, in Lambro, in Donna Inez, 
in Julia ! The picture of the festivities in the Pirate's Isle of the 
^gean, and the inopportune return of Lambro, is superlatively rich 
and vivid, and so is the caustic portraiture of English aristocratic 
life. 

^ Don J uan' is a complete expression of Byron's life and genius ; 
capricious, varied, ranging from cynic mockery ib the deepest tender- 
ness, it is also a perfect type of the age which produced it — an age 
at once sceptical and believing, bold and efieminate, shameless and 
hypocritical, coldly calculating and wildly imaginative ; and it was 
just that this splendid literary career should close with a work which 
is so full and perfect a type of its marked and inconsistent features. 

Among the singular contrasts and inconsistencies which crowd the 
personal and literary portrait of this man, not the least striking are 
those of his political existence. Born and bred an aristocrat, and 
exhibiting a tenacity of the prejudices of rank and manners even 
more than usually intense, Byron remained all his life a supporter 
of extreme liberal opinions. The two speeches, neither very success- 
ful, and exhibiting rather rhetorical than statesmanlike ability, which 
he pronounced in the House of Lords, recorded certainly an unequi- 
vocal adherence to liberal doctrines; and during his residence in 
Italy Byron not only expressed the warmest sympathy with the 
efforts of the Carbonari, but even entered into the unfortunate specu- 
lation of ^The Liberal,' a journal which totally failed. But at the 
end of his life a noble destiny invited him. He determined to take 
an active part in the Greek war of independence, and, after conse- 
crating to a cause which must have had for him, as a man, as an 
Englishman, and as a poet, the deepest interest, not only very con- 
siderable sums of money, but great exertions also, he landed, 
January 4th, 1824, at Missolonghi. Europe has hardly yet recovered 
from the shock of grief and admiration with which she learned that 
the great poet, whose glory had filled so large a space of the social 
horizon, had died (April 18th, 1824), after suffering a short but 
painful illness produced by extreme fatigue and anxiety acting 



362 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVIIT. 



upon a- mind and body worn out with all kind of indulgence and 
emotions. 

It was a benevolent destiny which ordained that this great man 
should die on those shores which owe half their immortality to his 
genius, and amid a nation whose nohle though fallen character be had 
rendered so interesting. His remains, after being conducted to the 
sea-shore amid the universal lamentations of the Greek patriots, 
were carried to England, and interred in the village church of Huck- 
nall, in Nottinghamshire, where many generations of his ancestors 
repose : and the stupid bigotry which refused his bones a place in the 
national cemetery of Westminster Abbey, has not long ago crowned 
its climax of imbecility by denying within the walls of that Pantheon 
of England's worthies a statue to the memory of him who is the 
chief among her intellectual glories in the nineteenth century ! 

The genius of Shelley is the most exceptional and abnormal, the^ 
most difficult to classify, of any of the great poetical manifestations 
of the present age. No author has exerted a more powerful influence 
on detached and individual minds ; there is none, at least of a merit 
in any way comparable to his, who has exerted so little influence on 
his time. Byron was a consummate artist, and always retains a 
complete consciousness and self-command. Plis muse is a Pythoness, 
who, in the fiercest moments of possession, remembers to sit grace- 
fully on her tripod. Shelley is the very reverse of this ; he does not 
possess his art, but is possessed it — crushed, overpowered, over- 
whelmed ; and if his works never fail to bear a peculiar ineffaceable 
stamp of ideal grace and beauty, this is to be attributed to the innate 
elegance and purity of his mind. His glory has been exposed to a 
destiny as strange and fantastic as his life; his fame has been 
equally injured by uncandid enemies and by injudicious admirers. 
Shelley's biography can be related in a very few words. In many 
of its chief outlines it bears a striking and melancholy resemblance 
to the story of his immortal friend, but there is a general vein of 
difference pervading even the most similar points in the history of the 
two men. Both were unhappy in their relations with the world, 
and both sought, and found, oblivion of their personal and social 
sufferings in the love of nature and in the unspeakable raptures of 
genial creation. But in Shelley, both the sufferings and the allevia- 
tion, both the disease and the remedy, were of the moral sense ; in 
Byron, both the one and the other were of the heart. Byron was 
discontented with the world as it is, Shelley was ever pining after a 
world which was not. Both were sprung from ancient and noble 
houses — Shelley was the son of a baronet of old family, and born 
in 1792; they both received a very similar education, first at one of 
the great English public schools, and afterwards at the university. 
From Eton Shelley was removed to Oxford, from whence he was 
expelled for the bold scepticism of his youthful poem ' Queen Mab/ 



CHAP. XVIII.] SHELLEY : HIS SCHOOL-DAYS. 



863 



But the Harrow boy was distinguished among his companions for 
generous manliness and the warmth of his schoolday friendships : 
the young Etonian, delicate and almost feminine in frame and 
manners, was filled with anguish at the foretaste of the world which 
the republican constitution of a great English school offers to the 
child yet warm from the soft existence of home. Shelley left Eton 
with his mind full of terror, disgust, and sensitiveness, and on enter- 
ing on his Oxford life plunged ardently into a sea of abstract and 
physical study. The spirit of resistance to authority and dogmatism, 
so natural to a youthful and enthusiastic temperament, and combined 
with a vague course of reading, led him to scepticism, and scepticism 
to atheism — if that system of belief may be called atheism, which, 
while denying the existence of a Divine Being, such as we conceive 
the Deity to be, supplies its place by an imaginary existence whose 
qualities and attributes, at least as far as they are not mere abstrac- 
tions, correspond exactly with our own conclusions respecting its 
nature. He published one or two trifling productions, apparently 
intended to brave the University, was expelled from Oxford, and 
soon afterwards renounced, when little past his boyhood, by his 
family. At eighteen he published the wild and fantastic poem 
' Queen Mab,' which was at the same time a formal exposition of 
the doctrines he had adopted in religious and political philosophy, 
chiefly consisting of the fallacies and paradoxes of the French 
writers of the eighteenth century. The sti?ig of this work lies in 
the noles, which are, however, little more than the often-refuted 
dreams of the philanthropist humanitarian theorists, but the poem 
contains many passages of that peculiar and inimitable melody which 
forms the great charm of Shelley's writings. 

At this period of his life, while yet a mere boy, Shelley married 
a girl of inferior birth and education, and travelled for some time on 
the continent. His union was unhappy, and, after once more return- 
ing for some time to England, he was separated from his wife. 
During this short residence in his own country, he lived principally 
amid the beautiful scenery of Windsor; and here he wrote his poem 
of ^ Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude.' In this work, a wild roman- 
tic poem, he describes the early fate of a youth, whose mind, elevated 
and purified by a lofty and benevolent philosophy, pines after com- 
munion with a similar spirit, and who dies desponding at not finding 
such a being. The strength of the poem consists in the exquisitely 
rich and ideal descriptions of solitary woodland scenery, for which 
Shelley had, indeed, a poet's eye. On being separated, by the inter- 
vention of the law, from his wife, he soon afterwards contracted a 
second marriage, with the daughter of Grodwin, a man whose opinions 
were in many respects in harmony with his own ; and retiring to a 
village in Buckinghamshire, produced ' The Revolt of Islam,' a 
rapturous declamatory narrative^ exhibitina;, under an allegorical 
30* 



364 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CIIAP. XVIII. 



form, the triumph of his philanthropic theories over the tyranny, 
hypocrisy, and hollowness which he considered inseparable from all 
the religious and political systems adopted by mankind. Plis health 
was now so weak — his fortune, in spite of the singular simplicity of 
his mode of life, so dilapidated — that he could no longer remain in 
England. He left his country, in 1818, never to return, and went 
directly to Italy, where he settled in a climate and a country much 
more congenial to his poetical temperament. He now produced his 
drama of ' Prometheus Unbound,' in some measure suggested, as 
far as its pure lyric form and colossal grandeur of outline are con- 
cerned, by the ' Prometheus ' of JSschylus. In spite of the tran- 
scendental reveries of modern, and particularly of German, criticism, 
which has discovered, in the gigantic drama of the Athenian, an 
allegorical shadowing forth of primeval struggles between human 
will and fate, between the good and evil principles of humanity, we 
are apt to believe that this lyric tragedy had no such esoteric and 
mysterious meaning, and that JEschylus simply embodied the tra- 
ditional mythology of his country, just as the rude monkish artist 
revived on his stage the events of the Christian history. The tran- 
scendental exposition, however, was best suited to Shelley's theory 
and object ; and, therefore, in his 'Prometheus Unbound' he has 
essayed to give us the complement or companion-picture to the wild 
and phantasmagoria! drama of ^schylus. His hero is nothing but 
a personification of man's indomitable resistance to the tyranny of 
religions and governments; for to religion and government he 
attributed all the ills which afflict humanity. It contains passages 
of the sublimest grandeur, and the most wonderful richness of ima- 
gination; but the effect of the whole is so vaporous and unsubstantial, 
the images which he evokes are so unsolid, that not even the unsur- 
passable purity of the diction, and the unequalled variety of the 
lyric music, can preserve us from weariness and a painful sense of 
dreamy confusion. As to the attacks upon all systems of religion, 
which he calls priestcraft, and all systems of government, which he 
styles tyranny, it is hardly necessary to refute them seriously here. 
Religion and government, the priest and the king, viewed from the 
point which Shelley has selected, are, indeed, open to all the charges 
he brings against them. But the fallacy precisely consists in his 
taking that point, and arguing ex abusu, the most fatal of all sophis- 
tries. It is obvious that false religions and bad kings are great evils, 
but the portion of human woe and crime which is produced by the 
most degrading of superstitions and the cruellest of despots is very 
far indeed from being comparable to the evils traceable to man's own 
selfishness and passions : and another great error of Shelley, and 
such reasoners, is the supposition that religion and kingship are 
something extraneous, foreign to our nature, and imposed by a supe- 
rior and independent force; whereas all experience and argument 



CHAP. XVIII.] SHELLEY : THE CENCI — POEMS. 



865 



show that these institutions, whether good or bad, are. essential!}^ the 
expression of man's own wants and condition, and are modified, not 
ab extra, but ab intra. 

In Shelley's writings it is very easy to separate the philosophy 
from the poetry; and the philosophy, though so hostile to existing 
conditions of society, is so free from any moral impurity, so ethereal, 
so imbued with deep love for everything noble and elevated, and 
withal so exceedingly abstract and impracticable, that we do not 
think it is likely to do much harm ; or, rather, the lovely and 
incessant manifestations of beauty in which it is clothed are 
calculated to do more good to the mind of a young and enthusiastic 
reader, than the declamatory sophistries of the reasoning can do 
injury. 

In 1819 Shelley produced a work surprisingly distinct, in form 
and spirit, from any of his previous poems. This was the tragedy 
of 'The Cenci,' founded upon one of the most horrible domestic 
tragedies recorded in the black annals of Italian society in the 
Middle Ages — annals which seem written with blood and poison, 
and recalling a mode of existence only the more revolting from the 
glow of intellectual splendour which art, literature, and civilization 
throw over corruption and profligacy. This portion of history re- 
sembles the terrific picture of Correggio in which the gilded wreath- 
ing serpents are twined around the features of Medusa, lovely but 
infernal. The style of this play is astonishingly intense and nervous, 
and the character of the unhappy Beatrice contains some strokes of 
true and profound pathos, particularly the scene before her execution. 
The father is one of those demons of wickedness which happily are 
so rare, that our incredulity becomes an antidote to our loathing. 
Such beings are unfit for dramatic purposes, and it is no defence to 
say that they have existed : they are foul anomalies. 

We have but few words to say of a number of Shelley's subse- 
quent poems — 'Hellas,' 'The Witch of Atlas,' 'iVdonais' (a lament 
for the death of Keats), and ' Rosalind and Helen.' In the former 
two of these works we have a repetition, though in somewhat feebler 
and more diluted language, of the same wild declamation against the 
corruptions of society which forms the staple of his earlier poems, 
and a reiteration of the same fallacies about priestcraft and king- 
craft; but'Adonais' is a beautiful and affectionate tribute to the 
memory of Keats, whose early death deprived the world of the 
promise of a great poet, and whose manner of thinking and writing 
had much in common with that of Shelley. In 'Rosalind and Helen,' 
we have an exposition (in form of a domestic tale) of the evils which 
the poet supposes to arise from the institution of marriage. He shows 
us two beautiful and accomplished beings, one of whom is driven to 
despair and death by the tyranny and caprices of an old and repulsive 
husband, while the other lives a life of happiness and innocence in a 



866 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XVIII. 



union not sanctified by the indissoluble tie of marriage. But, in all 
human affairs, ''abusus non tollit usum," and this tie was undoubt- 
edly invented for the general welfare of mankind, to which experi- 
ence shows that it in the main conduces : so the selection of an 
arbitrary and imaginary case, where misery follows wedlock, and 
happiness is assured by a kind of philosophical concubinage, proves 
nothing at all. It would be just as easy, and infinitely more in 
accordance with ordinary experience, to select an exactly opposite 
case. Such theorists begin at the wrong end : marriage is not bad 
because married people are sometimes unhappy together^ but people 
may be unhappy though marriage in the main is good. 

The death of this exquisite poet, and benevolent visionary, was 
singular and melancholy. He was returning in a small yacht from 
Kavenna to Rome, when his vessel was caught by a squall in the 
Bay of Spezzia, and Shelley and his two companions perished. The 
poet's body was afterwards washed on shore, and burned, after the 
ancient manner, on a funeral pile, in presence of Byron and several 
others of his friends. The ashes of Shelley were buried in the 
Protestant cemetery of Bome, near the pyramid of Cestius — a spot 
of sad and tranquil loveliness^ where repose the remains of many 
English wanderers. 

Shelley died in 1822, and in his end, and even in the manner of 
his funeral, there was something strangely in accordance with his 
life and sorrows. In spite of the hostile and revolutionary tone of 
his philosophy, he was, as a man, mild, benevolent, temperate, 
refined : his person, almost ethereal in its delicacy, was in apt 
accordance with the abstract and ^nsionary tone of his writings : the 
chief characteristic of his poetry is its profusion of imagery, and a 
spiritual, tender harmony, like the fitful music of the ^olian harp, 
which no English poet has ever surpassed in variety and sweetness : 
the images are of a character at once bold and tender in the highest 
degree ; his intensely passionate study of Greek literature (particu- 
larly the lyric writings) gives a peculiar air of classical purity and 
transparency to his conceptions : and from the same inexhaustible 
source he drew those artifices of metrical arrangement which make 
the English language, in his hands, as flexible, as musical, as the 
Grreek itself. One peculiarity in his manner is particularlv to be 
noticed : it is what may be called incatenation, a linking together 
of images, each of which is attached to that which precedes it, and 
which in its turn suggests another which follows it, but which often 
lead the reader far away from the original generating idea; so that, 
if we take two images placed even at a short interval from each 
other, we shall often be astonished that two ideas so different can be 
connected together by any middle term. Shelley's mind was in the 
highest degree impressionable — nay, almost feminine; and thus we 
often perceive a want of keeping and relief in the subordinate parts 



CHAP. XVIII.] SHELLEY : HIS PECULIARITIES. 



367 



of his diction : the subsidiary or illustrative image is as vivid as that 
which it is meant to enforce or interpret; and in him we find a per- 
petual interchange of type and thing typified, as, for instance, in his 
exquisite * Ode to the West Wind,' where the dead leaves are com- 
pared to ghosts flying before the spell of an enchanter. Shakspeare 
has innumerable examples of this incatenation of metaphors and 
images : it is impossible to open his plays without seeing plentiful 
instances of it : it is, indeed, the characteristic of his manner : but 
in him the secondary, the illustrative, is always subordinate ; while 
in Shelley the ornament perpetually eclipses the thing to be adorned. 
In short, Shakspeare "writes all like a man," while Shelley writes 
like a woman. This singular tendency sometimes renders passages 
otherwise beautiful almost unintelligible, as, for instance, in those 
wonderful lines 'On a Cloud,' where the illustrations, drawn from 
animated nature, are so crowded in the delineation of inanimate 
things, that the effect is rather fantastical and dazzling than beautiful 
or distinct. Conscious, too, perhaps, of this feminineness of mind, 
so ill in accordance with the haughty and serene tone of philosophy 
which he struggled to maintain, he was apt to exaggerate the horri- 
ble and repulsive, and his struggles to attain energy and a fierce 
declamatory tone are often rather extravagant than powerful. But 
with all these deductions made, the genius of Shelley will not fail to 
be held by posterity as a wonderful manifestation of power, of grace, 
and sweetness; and the ode we have just quoted, and the lovely 
* Lines written in the Euganean Hills,' and that to a ' Skylark,' 
which is the very warbling of the triumphant bird, and . the tender 
beauty of the ' Sensitive Plant,' and the magical translations of the 
' Walpurgisnacht ' of Groethe, and a thousand passages in the longer 
poems, will form for the memory of Shelley a wreath of fadeless 
flowers worthy of him who was the friend of Byron^ and the pure 
apostle of a noble but mistaken philanthropy. 



368 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XTX. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE MODERN NOVELISTS. 

Prose Fiction — The Romance : Walpole, Mrs. RadclifFe, Lewis, Maturin, and 
Mrs. Shelley — James, Ainsworth, and Bulwer — The Novel : Miss Burney 
— Godwin — Miss Edgeworth — Local Novels: Gait, Wilson, Banim, &c. 
— Fashionable Novels: Ward, Lister, &c. — Miss Austen — Hook — Mrs. 
Trollope — Miss Mitford — Warren — Dickens — Novels of Foreign Life: Beck- 
ford, Hope, and Morier — Naval and Military Novels: Marryat and R. 
Scott. 

The department of Englisli literature whicli has been cultivated 
during the latter half of the last and the commencement of the 
present century with the greatest assiduity and success is undoubtedly 
that of prose fiction — the romance and the novel. 

This branch of our subject is so extensive, and it embraces such a 
multitude of works and names, that the only feasible method of 
treating it so as to give an idea of its immense riches and fertility 
will be to classify the authors and their productions into a few great 
general species : and though there are some names (as that of Bulwer, 
for example) which may appear to belong to several of these subdi- 
visions, our plan will be found, we trust, to secure clearness and aid 
the memory. The divisions which we propose are as follows: I. 
Romances properly so called ; i. e. works of narrative fiction, embody- 
ing periods of ancient or middle-age history, the adventures of which 
are generally of a picturesque and romantic character, and the 
personages (whether taken from history, or invented so as to accord 
with the time and character of the action) of a lofty and imposing 
kind. II. The vast class of pictures of society, whether invented 
or not. These are generally novels, i. e. romans de vie intime, 
though some, as those of Godwin, may be highly imaginative, and 
even tragic. This class contains a great treasury of what may be 
called pictures of local manners, as of Scottish and Irish life. III. 
Oriental novels — a branch almost peculiar to English fiction; and 
originating partly in the acquaintance with the East derived by 
Grreat Britain from her gigantic Oriental empire, and partly from the 
Englishman's restless, inappeasable passion for travelling. TV. 
Naval and military novels; giving pictures of striking adventure, 
and containing records of England's innumerable triumphs, by sea 
and land, together with sketches of the manners, habits, and feelings 
of our soldiers and sailors. 

The history of modern prose fiction in England will be found to 
accord pretty closely with the classification we have, just adopted. 



CHAP. XIX.] PROSE FICTION : WALPOLE. 



369 



We have spoken in another place of the three patriarchs of the 
English novel — Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett : and the immense 
class of works we are about to consider may be looked upon as totally 
distinct from the immortal productions of these great men, though 
the first impulse given to prose fiction will be found to have been in 
no sense communicated by ^ Clarissa,^ ^Tom Jones,' or 'Roderick 
Random.' This impulse was given by Horace Walpole, the fasti- 
dious dilettante and brilliant chronicler of the court scandal of his 
day, a man of singularly acute penetration, of sparkling epigram- 
matic style, but of a mind devoid of enthusiasm and elevation. 
Rather a French courtier in taste and habits than an English noble- 
man, he retired early from political life, veiling a certain conscious- 
ness of political incapacity under an effeminate and affected contempt 
for a parliamentary career, and shut himself up in his little fantastic 
Grothic castle at Strawberry Hill, to collect armour, medals, manu- 
scripts, and painted glass, and to chronicle with malicious assiduity, 
in his vast and brilliant correspondence, the absurdities, follies, and 
weaknesses of his day. 

' The Castle of Otranto' is a short tale, written with great rapidity 
and without any preparation, in which the first successful attempt 
was made to take the Feudal Age as the period, and the passion of 
mysterious, superstitious terror as the prime mover, of an interesting 
fiction. The supernatural machinery consists of a gigantic armed 
figure dimly seen at midnight in the gloomy halls and huge stair- 
cases of this feudal abode — of a colossal helmet which finds its way 
into the court-yard, filling everybody with dread and consternation 
— of a picture which descends from its frame to upbraid a wicked 
oppressor — of a vast apparition at the end — and a liberal allowance 
of secret panels, subterranean passages, breathless pursuit and 
escape. The manners are totally absurd and unnatural, the heroine 
being one of those inconsistent portraits in which the sentimental 
languor of the eighteenth century is superadded to the female 
character of the Middle Ages — in short, one of those incongruous 
contradictions which we meet in all the romantic fictions before 
Scott. 

The immense success of Walpole's original and cleverly-written 
tale encouraged other and more accomplished artists to follow in the 
same track. After mentioning Clara Reeve, whose ' Old English 
Baron' contains the same defects without the beauties of Walpole's 
haunted castle, we come to the great name of this class, Acne Rad- 
cliffe, whose numerous romances exhibit a ver}'' high order of genius, 
and a surprising power (perhaps never equalled) over the emotions 
of fear and undefined mysterious suspense. Hei two greatest works 
are, ' The Romance of the Forest,' and ' The Mysteries of Udolpho.' 
The scenery of her predilection is that of Italy and the south of 
France ; and though she does not place the reader among the fierce 



870 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIX. 



and picturesque life of the Middle Ages, she has, perhaps, rather 
gained than lost by choosing the ruined castles of the Pyrenees and 
Apennines for the theatre, and the dark passions of profligate Italian 
counts for the principal moving power, of her wonderful fictions. 
The substance of them all is pretty nearly the same ; and the author's 
total incapacity to paint individual character only makes us the 
more admire the power by which she interests us through the never- 
failing medium of suspense. Mystery is the whole spell. Nothing 
can be poorer and more conventional than the personages : they are 
not human beings, nor even the types of classes ; they have no 
more individuality than the pieces of a chess-board ; they are merely 
counters; but the skill with which the author juggles with them 
gives them a kind of awful necromantic interest. The characters 
are mere abstract algebraical expressions, but they are made the 
exponents of such terrible and intense fear, suffering, and suspense, 
that we sympathise with their fate as if they were real. Her reper- 
tory is very limited : a persecuted sentimental young lady, a wicked 
and myterious count, a haggard monk, a tattling but faithful waiting- 
maid, — such is the poor human element out of which these wonderful 
structures are created. Balzac, in one of his tales, speaks with great 
admiration of an artist who, by a few touches of his pencil, could 
give to a most commonplace scene an air of overpowering horror, 
and throw over the most ordinary and prosaic objects a spectral air 
of crime and blood. Through a half-opened door you see a bed 
with the clothes confusedly heaped, as in some death-struggle, over 
an undefined object which fancy whispers must be a bleeding corpse; 
on the floor you see a slipper, an upset candlestick, and a knife per- 
haps ; and these hints tell the story of blood more significantly and 
more powerfully than the most tremendous detail, because the 
imagination of man is more powerful than art itself : — 

*' Over all there hung a cloud of fear, 
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted, 

And said, as plain as whisper to the ear, 
The place is haunted." 

A great defect of Anne Radclifi'e^s fictions is not their tediousness 
of description, nor even the somewhat mawkish sentimentality with 
which they may be reproached, nor the feebly-elegant verses which 
the heroines are represented as writing on all occasions (indeed all 
these things indirectly conduce to the elfect by contrast and prepara- 
tion) 5 but the unfortunate principle she had imposed upon herself, 
of clearing up, at the end of the story, all the circumstances that 
appeared supernatural — of carrying us, as it were, behind the scenes 
at the end of the play, and showing us the dirty ropes' and trap- 
doors, the daubed canvas, the Bengal fire, by which these wonderful 
impressions had been produced. If we had supped after the play 
with the " blood-bolter'd Banquo," or the "majesty of buried Den- 



CHAP. XIX.] LEWIS MATURIN MRS. SHELLEY. 



371 



mark," we should not probably be able to feel a due amount of 
terror tbe next time we saw them on the stage ; but in Mrs. Rad- 
cliffe, where the feeling of terror is the principal thing aimed at, this 
discovery of the mechanism deprives us of all future interest in the 
story; for, after all, pure fear — sensual, not moral, fear — is by no 
means a legitimate object of high art. 

A class of writing apparently so easy, and likely to produce so 
powerful and universal an effect — an effect even more powerful on 
the least critical minds — was, of course, followed by a crowd of 
writers. Most of these have descended to oblivion and a deserved 
neglect. We may say a few words of Lewis, Maturin, and Mrs. 
Shelley. The first of these, a good-natured effeminate man of 
fashion, the friend of Byron, and one of the early literary advisers 
of Scott, was the first to introduce into England a taste for the infant 
German literature of that day, with its spectral ballads and diablerie 
of all kinds. He was a man of lively and childish imagination ; and, 
besides his metrical translations of the ballads of Biirger, and others 
of the same class, he published a prose romance called ' The Monk,' 
full of horrible crimes and diabolic agency. It contains several pas- 
sages of considerable power, particularly the episode of ' The Bleed- 
ing Nun,^ in which the- wandering J ew — that godsend for all writers, 
good, bad, and indifferent, of the " intense^' or demoniac school — is 
introduced with picturesque effect ; but the book owes its continued 
popularity (though, we are happy to say, only among half-educated 
young men and ecstatic milliners) chiefly to the licentious warmth 
of many of its scenes. Maturin was a young Irishman of great 
promise and still greater vanity, who carried the intellectual merits 
and defects of his countrymen to an extreme little short of carica- 
ture : his imagination was vivid, and he possessed a kind of extrava- 
gant and convulsive eloquence, but his works are full of the most 
outrageous absurdities. He perpetually mistakes monstrosity for 
power, and lasciviousness for warmth. His life was short and 
unhappy, and his chief work is 'Melmoth,' a farrago of impossible 
and inconceivable adventures, without plan or coherence, in which 
the Devil (who is represented as an Irish gentleman of good family 
in the eighteenth century) is the chief agent. Mrs. Shelley is known 
also, in this department, as the authoress of the powerful tale of 
' Frankenstein,' in which a young student of physiology succeeds in 
coDstructing, out of the horrid remnants of the churchyard and 
dissecting-room, a kind of monster, to which he afterwards gives, 
apparently by the agency of galvanism, a kind of spectral and con- 
vulsive life. This existence, rendered insupportable to the monster 
by his vain cravings after human sympathy, and by his conscious- 
ness of his own deformity, is employed in inflicting (in some cases 
involuntarily) the most dreadful retribution on the guilty philoso- 
pher; and some of the chief appearances of the monster^ particu- 
31 



872 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIX. 



larly the moment when he begins to move for the first time, and, 
towards the end of the book, among the eternal snows of the arctic 
circle, are managed with a striking and breathless efiect, that makes 
us for a moment forget the childish improbability and melodramatic 
extravagance of the tale. 

To this subdivision will belong the works of that most easy and 
prolific writer, James — the most industrious, if not always most 
successful, imitator of Scott, in revival of chivalric and middle-age 
scenes. The number of James's works is immense, but they bear 
among themselves a family likeness so strong, and even oppressive, 
that it is impossible to consider this author otherwise than as an 
ingenious imitator and copyist — first of Scott, and secondly of himself. 
The spirit of repetition is, indeed, carried so far, that it is possible 
to guess beforehand, and with perfect certainty, the principal contents, 
and even the chief persons, of one of James's historical novels. 
His heroes and heroines, whose features are almost always gracefully 
and elegantly sketched in, have more of the English than continental 
character. We are sure to have a nondescript grotesque as a 
secondary personage — a half-crazy jester, ever hovering between the 
harebrained villain and the faithful retainer : we may count upon 
abundance of woodland scenery (often described with singular delicacy 
and tenderness of language) and moonlight rendezvous of robbers 
and conspirators. But whereas Scott has all these things, it must 
be remembered how much more he has beside. He looks through 
all things ''with a learned spirit :" James stops short here, unless 
we notice his innumerable pictures of battles, tournaments, hunting- 
scenes, and old castles, where we find much more of the forced and 
artificial accuracy of the antiquary, than of the poet's all-embracing, 
all-imagining eye. James is particularly versed in the history of 
France, and some of his most successful novels have reference to that 
country, among which we may mention ' Richelieu.' His great 
deficiency is want of real, direct, powerful human passion, and conse- 
quently of life and movement in his intrigues. There is thrown 
over his fictions a general air of good-natured, frank, and well-bred 
refinement, which, however laudable, cannot fail to be found rather 
tiresome and monotonous. 

This difference between the works of Scott and those among his 
imitators who have endeavoured to revive the phantoms of past ages 
with " the very form and pressure of the time," is also perceptible 
in the works of Ainsworth and Bulwer : of course we allude only to 
those in which are depicted the manners of by-gone society. Both 
of these authors have enjoyed a ver}^ high degree of popularity ; and 
though it would be an injustice to the author of ' Eugene Aram' to 
compare him, in a general sense, with the writer of ' Rookwood' 
and ' Jack Sheppard,' yet we may with advantage establish a parallel 
between these two novelists as far as they are historical. Several of 



CHAP. XIX.] 



AINSWORTH. 



373 



Ainswortb's earlier and best works were pictures of mediseval 
manners and society, and they exhibited, together witb much of the 
extravagance, false taste, and melodramatic exaggeration of youthful 
productions^ no small amount of power, picturesqueness, and origi- 
nality. 

It may appear unjust to the genius of Victor Hugo to say so, but to 
our minds the romances of xiinsworth possess more resemblance to 
the particular manner of ' Notre Dame de Paris' than any other 
productions of English literature. If the romantic school of modern 
France was really generated, as some critics maintain, by the unex- 
ampled fascination of Scott's historical fictions, the offspring yery 
soon lost all family resemblance to its parent. All that is essential 
and characteristic in Scott has disappeared — the simplicity, the ease, 
the natural and unforced pathos, the fresh and manly drollery, the 
obtaining of the most powerful impressions by the play of ordinary 
but consistent chanicters. Instead of this we have, in the modern 
French school, an intense convulsive energy, proceeding, not by 
gradual and uninterrupted progression, but by violent and conse- 
quently temporary jerks of passion and surprise. In Scott there 
are very few scenes which can be detached bodily from the work so 
as to lose no portion of their interest and picturesqueness, and capable 
of forming gems or brilliant extracts in a Chrestomathia ; whereas, 
in the other writers, these bright and salient scenes form precisely 
the merit of the work, and the writers seem to be of the opinion of 
Bayes in ' The Rehearsal,' who asks " what the plague is the use of 
the plot, but to bring in the fine things 

■ The general tone of Scott (as well as of Fielding, Cervantes, and 
Shakspeare) is remarkable for its universality — for being intelligible 
to all men, dealing with the ordinary elements of human character, 
and consequently coming home to all readers. These elements are 
indeed highly idealised, for the ideal is the very essence of art, but 
everybody can comprehend them in the measure of his own powers 
and sympathies. The contrary of this takes place in the school of 
Hugo. Starting from the shallow paradox, that the adaptability of 
an object to the purposes of art can only be measured by its power 
of producing strong emotion, they have conceived that hideous and 
monstrous objects are quite as fit materials for their purpose as what 
is beautiful and sublime : if it be not true with them that " le laid 
est le beau," at least they have shown a perfect indifference which 
they should choose, and have even exhibited a preference for the 
horrible and the repulsive. They forget that there is a strong line 
of demarcation between horror and terror, and that it is the former 
sentiment alone which is a legitimate object of art. The works of 
Ainsworth possess much of this fragmentary and convulsive character, 
and the erudition (often great) which he has lavished on his pictures 
of past ages, bears, like that of Victor Hugo, a painful air of effort 



374 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIX. 



— of having been read up for the purpose, and collected for the 
nonce. The most successful of Ainsworth's romances are ' Kook- 
wood' (the first) and 'Jack Sheppard :' the former owes its success 
chiefly to the wonderful hurry and rapid vividness of Turpin's ride 
from London to York in one day, and in the latter the author has 
broken up what appeared to the public to be new ground — the 
adventures of highwaymen, prostitutes, and thieftakers. Defoe had 
done this before, and with astonishing power of invention and proba- 
bility ; but that great moralist has never confounded good and e^dl, 
and has shown his squalid ragamuffins as miserable in their lives as 
they were contemptible and odious in their crimes.- Ainsworth, 
however, has looked upon the romantic side of the picture, and has 
represented his ruffian hero as a model of gallantry and courage. 
This, we know, is contrary to universal experience and probability; 
and while we read with breathless interest the escape of Jack from 
prison, we forget the monstrous inconsistencies of the story, and the 
inean and wolfish character of the real criminal, who is here elevated 
into a hero of romance. To the ignorant and uneducated, who are 
charmed, like everj^body else, w^ith the boldness, dexterity, and 
perseverance so often exhibited by the worst characters, and which 
are here dignified with all the artifices of description, but who 
cannot distinguish between the good and the evil which are mixed 
up even in the basest characters, this kind of reading is capable of 
doing, and has done, the greatest mischief; and the very talent — 
often undeniable — of such workS; only renders them the more 
seductive and insidious. 

Bulwer has written in so many different styles, that he almost 
forms a separate subdivision of our classification of prose fiction. 
"VVe may, however, view his long and active career under three 
distinct epochs, the first exampled in 'Pelham,' the second in 
^ Eugene Aram,^ and the third in ' Ernest Maltravers.' In the 
earliest of these we find him essaying to give a lively and somewhat 
ironic reflection of the manners of the higher classes, mingled with 
occasional scenes of low life, sometimes of a broadly comic and 
farcical, though more often of a gloomy tragic solemnity; in the 
second we find an attempt at the ideal in his art ; and in the third a 
mixture of the pure ideal v/ith a prevailing tone of philosophic 
analysis of character, and a metaphysical and abstract investigation 
into the principles of human passion and human life, their strength 
and weakness, their health and their disease. 'Pelham^ is in general 
gay and brilliant enough ; not very profound, it is true, but lively, 
sparkling, and effervescent. It contains a great many ingenious 
paradoxes, clever epigrams, and good things ; many scattered hints 
and fragments of character, but not a single personage drawn with 
consistency and force. Pelham, the hero, is nothing but a compound 
of two or three affectations which indeed are often found together in 



CHAP. XIX.] 



BULTVSR. 



875 



an effeminate dandy and wit about town, but which in no sense compose 
a, real human being : Pelham bears the same relation to Tom Jones, 
for instance, that a painter's lay figure bears to a living man. The 
same thing may be said of Vincent; and Grlanville is nothing but a 
caricature of the Corsairs, Manfreds, and Childe Harolds, which 
Byron's poetry brought into fashion. But in Byron these characters, 
■unnatural as they are, are rendered less apparently so by the romantic 
grandeur and melancholy beauty of the scenery which forms their 
background, and by the ideal and ecstatic tone which is essential to 
poetry; Grlanville is Lara speaking in the House of Commons, wear- 
ing a dress-coat, with a fine house in Grrosvenor Square. The scenes, 
towards the end of the book, among the thieves, are powerfully 
interesting, from the author's talent of direct, simple, unaffected 
description — a quality which he possesses in a high degree : but as 
pictures of the real manners and way of life of such persons, they 
are totally absurd and impossible. In this novel, as well as in 
several others (in 'Paul Clifford' for instance, and in some parts of 
'Ernest Maltravers '), Bulwer has attempted, like Ainsworth in 
* Jack Sheppard,' or Eugene Sue in ' Les Mysteres de Paris,^ to 
bring on the scene the interior life of the lowest orders of artisans, 
malefactors, &c. ; but a whole work can never consist entirely of 
such scenes; and with whatever fidelity these things and persons 
may be described, we always find these authors at a loss when it 
comes to the fitting on these passages to the descriptions of ordinary 
life and personages. They are placed separately, detachedly before 
the reader, like prints taken from a portfolio or pictures in a gallery ; 
they do not melt into each other by just gradations, as they would 
to a person successively visiting them : we jump from one to the 
other; there is nothing between. 'Paul Clifford,' the personages 
of which are almost all members of a band of highwaymen, the 
chief being the hero, is a notable example of this discord : the 
characters are alternately philosophers, high-bred gentlemen, and 
robbers ; Clifford himself a mixture of the coxcomb, the brigand, 
and the satirist of society. The want of harmony to which we have 
alluded is never to be found in the works of the greatest writers of 
fiction. Our curiosity is gratified, but not a craving after childish 
wonder ; we have thieves and thieftakers in abundance, gipsies, and 
rioters, and we have also nobles and judges, tradesmen and princes ; 
but we nowhere see sentimental pickpockets, or highwaymen declaim- 
ing against the vanity of human wishes. Mere surprise in fiction is 
as much below the dignity of the art, as optical illusion is degrading 
to the art of painting. In the next phase of his literary develop- 
ment, Bulwer has given pictures of a more lofty, ambitious, and 
ideal kind. Of this ' Eugene Aram' is an example. But here he 
has exhibited not only an ostentatious parade of indigested philosophy, 
crudely gathered up chieflv from German writers, but a very repre- 
31* 



376 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIX. 



hensible neglect of tKe distinctions between good and evil, between 
virtue and crime. Aram, in the true record of his life, gathered 
from the prosaic but faithful documents of his trial, was a self-edu- 
cated man of unusual powers of mind, but in a moral point of view 
a criminal of the most ordinary calibre. He committed under the 
basest of influences an atrocious and cowardly murder, which was 
afterwards discovered in a very singular manner ; he defended himself 
with much perverted ability, which only increases our detestation for 
his character, and perished on a well-merited gallows. Now in 
Bulwer's story we have nothing of what we should conceive to be 
the most impressive and dramatic features of this event — the ever- 
present terror, the fascination of the murderer, his remorse, his 
struggles in the net of retribution which imprisoned him, the horrid 
certainty of discover}?-, and the striking scene of that discovery ; we 
have the robber and murderer of an old man metamorphosed into 
a romantic enthusiast of the beautiful and the good — a haughty and 
retiring scholar, who has been led, in spite of himself, into a crime 
which his soul abhors, and which he almost justifies on his trial by 
asserting that in robbing and murdering Daniel Clarke he wished to 
remedy the unjust and unecjual distribution of wealth which Provi- 
dence has made. 

This taste for soi-disanl philosophy Bulwer carries yet farther in 
his later works; in 'Zanoni^ and ^ Night and Morning' it forms the 
staple of the productions. Irritated, perhaps, by the shrewd common 
sense which characterises the judgment of English critics, and which 
did not fail, of course, to point out the weak parts and inconsistencies 
of many of his novels, Bulwer threw himself headlong into the 
turbid ocean of German metaphysics ; and his later works, though 
still exhibiting his usual flowing style and vivacity of conception, 
have become a kind of clumsy allegories, generally developing a 
paradox or an absurdity. The truest and profoundest philosophy of 
life is to be gathered from the faithfullest. representations of its action 
and passion ; the great verities of humanity spring, like wild flowers, 
by the hedges and waysides of existence ; and, to our idea, there is 
more true depth, true knowledge, true wisdom, in a single, fresh, 
vigorous, unaffected, strongly-drawn scene of Fielding or of Scott, 
than in whole libraries of such cloudy raptures as ' Zanoni ' or as 
* Alice.' His more purely historical novels are much superior, par- 
ticularly 'Bienzi,' though the character of the hero is rather of the 
nineteenth than of the fourteenth century. This novel, which is 
also better constructed than his works -usually are in point of plot, 
was to a certain degree a labour of love, inasmuch as it served the 
author to embody many of his political convictions. ' The Last 
Pays of Pompeii' is also generally read with great interest; and 
though there is rather too much parade of not always very accurate 
antiquarian knowledge, it is written with great verve and brilliancy 



CHAP. XIX.] THE novel: MISS BURNEY. 377 



of imagination. In ^ The Last of the Barons' he lias ventured into 
the enchanted ground occupied by Scott — English mediaeval history ; 
but with exactly the success that was to be expected. ' The book is 
a heavy and extravagant caricature, with perhaps not a single page 
worthy of Bulwer's reputation. 

Our second subdivision — the novels of real life and society — is so 
extensive that we can but throw a rapid glance on its principal pro- 
ductions. To do this consistently with clearness we must begin rather 
far back, with the novels of Miss Burney. This lady, while yet 
residing at her father's house, composed, in her stolen moments of 
leisure, the novel of 'Evelina,' and is related not to have commu- 
nicated to her father the secret of its having been written by her, 
until the astonishing success of the fiction rendered her avowal 
triumphant and almost necessary. 'Evelina' was followed by a 
number of other novels bearing the same character : their chief defect 
is vulgarity of feeling — not that falsely called vulgarity which describes 
with congenial animation Ioav scenes and humble personages, but the 
affectation of delicacy and refinement. The heroines are perpetually 
trembling at the thought of impropriety, and exhibit a nervous, 
restless dread of appearing indelicate, that absolutely renders them 
the very essence of vulgarity. All the difficulties and misfortunes 
in these plots arise from the want, on the part of the principal per- 
sonages, of a little candour and straightforwardness, and would be 
set right by a few words of simple explanation : in this respect the 
authoress drew from herself; for her lately-published 'Memoirs' 
exhibit her as existing in a perpetual fever of vanity and petty 
expedients ; and in her gross affectation of more than feminine 
modesty and bashfulness — literary as well as personal — we see the 
painful, incessant flutter of her "darling sin" — "the pride that apes 
humility." Women are endowed by nature with a peculiar delicacy 
of tact and sensibility ; and being excluded, by the now-existing 
laws of society, from taking an active part in the rougher struggles 
of life, they acquire much more than the other sex a singular pene- 
tration in judging of character from slight and external peculiarities. 
In acquiring this power they are manifestly aided by their really 
subordinate, though apparently supreme, position in society, by the 
seductions to which they are exposed, and by the tone of artificial 
. deference in which they are always addressed; men who appear to 
-each other in comparatively natural colours never approach women 
(particularly unmarried women) but with a mask of chivalry and 
politeness on their faces; and women, in their turn, soon learn to 
divine the real character under all these smooth disguisemeuts. 

The prevailing literary form, or type, of the present age, is un- 
doubtedly the novel — the narrative picture of manners; just as the 
epic is the natural literary form of the heroic or traditionary period : 
and the above remarks will, we think, sufficiently explain the phe- 



878 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [OHAP. XIX. 



nomenoii of so many women now appearing, in France, G-ermany, 
and England, as novel-writers. Our society is highly artificial : the 
broad distinctions and demarcations which anciently separated one 
class of men and one profession from another, have been polished 
away, or filled up by increasing refinement and the extension of 
personal liberty : the artisan and the courtier, the lawyer and the 
di\^ne, are no longer distinguished either by professional costume, or 
by any of those outward and visible signs which formerly stamped 
their manners and language, and furnished the old comic writer with 
strongly-marked characters ready made to his hand. We must now 
go deeper : the coat is the same everywhere ; consequently, we must 
strip the man — nay, we must anatomise him — to show how he 
differs from his neighbours. To do this well, fineness of penetration 
is, above all, necessary — a quality which women, cceteris paribus^ 
possess in a higher degree than men. 

Miss Burney was followed by a number of writers, chiefly women, 
among whom the names of Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Opie are promi- 
nent. Their fictions, like those of Miss Edgeworth in more recent 
times, have a high and never-failing moral aim; and both these 
ladies have exhibited a power over the feelings, and an intensity of 
pathos, not much inferior to Richardson's in 'Clarissa Harlowe.^ 
But their works are very unequal, and the pathos of which we 
speak is not difi"used, but concentrated into particular moments 
of the action, and is also obtained at the expense of great prepara- 
tion and involution of circumstances ; so that to compare their genius 
to that of Richardson, on the strength of a few powerful pictures 
of intense moral pathos, would be a gross injustice to the admirable 
and consummate artist, in whose works the pathos, inimitable as it is, 
forms but one item in a long list of his excellences. 

At the head of the second division of our fictions is undoubtedly 
"William Godwin, a man of truly powerful and original genius, who 
devoted his whole life to the propagation of certain social and political 
theories — visionary, indeed, and totally impracticable, but marked 
with the impress of benevolence and philanthropy. With these 
ideas Godwin's mind was perfectly saturated and possessed, and this 
intensity of conviction, this ardent propagandising not only gives to 
his writings a peculiar character of earnestness and thought — 
earnestness, the rarest and most impressive of literary qualities — but 
may be considered to have made him, in spite of all the tendencies 
of his intellectual character — invitd Minerva — a novelist. Godwin 
was born in 1756, and appears to have sucked with his mother's 
milk those principles of resistance to authority, and attachment to 
free opinions in church and state, which had been handed down from 
one sturdy Dissenter to another from the days of the ci\'il war and 
the republic. He was in reality one of those hard-headed enthusiasts 
— at once wild visionaries and severe logicians — who abounded ia 



CHAP. XIX.] 



GODWIN, 



379 



the age of Marrell, Milton, and Hamngton; and his true epoch 
would have been the first period of Cromwell's public life. His own 
career, extending down to his death in 183B, was incessantly occu- 
pied with literary activity ; he produced an immense number of works, 
some immortal for the genius and originality they display, and all for 
an intensity and gravity of thought, for reading and erudition. The 
first work which brought him into notice was the ' Essay on Political 
Justice,' a Utopian theory of morals and government, by" which 
virtue and benevolence was to be the primum moMIe" of all human 
actions, and a philosophical republic — that favourite dream of vision- 
aries — was to take place of all our imperfect modes of polity. Ani- 
mated during his whole life by these opinions, he has embodied them 
under a variety of forms, among the rest in his immortal romances. 
The first and finest of these is ' Caleb TTilliams.' Its chief didactic 
aim is to show the misery and injustice arising from our present 
imperfect constitution of society, and the oppression of our imperfect 
laws, both written and unwritten — the jus scripium of the statute- 
book, and the jus non scriptum of social feeling and public opinion. 
Caleb Williams is an intelligent peasant lad, taken into the service 
of Falkland, the tnie hero, an incarnation of honour, intellect, 
benevolence, and a passionate love of fame. This model of all the 
chivalrous and elevated qualities has previously, under the provoca- 
tion of the cmellest, most persevering, and tyrannic insult, in a 
moment of ungovernable passion, committed a murder : his fanatic 
love of reputation urges him to conceal this crime ; and, in order to 
do this more efi"ectually; he allows an innocent man to be executed, 
and his family ruined. TTilliams obtains, by an accident, a clue to 
the guilt of Falkland, when the latter, extorting from him an oath 
that he will keep his secret, communicates to his dependant the 
whole story of his double crime, of his remorse abd misery. The 
youth, finding his life insupportable from the perpetual suspicion to 
which he is exposed, and the restless surveillance of his master, 
escapes; and is pursued through the greater part of the tale by the 
unrelenting persecution of Falkland, who, after having committed 
one crime under unsupportable provocation, and a second to conceal 
the first, is now led, by his frantic and unnatural devotion to fame, 
to annihilate, in Williams, the evidence of his guilt. The adventures 
of the unfortunate fugitive, his dreadful vicissitudes of poverty and 
distress, the steady, bloodhound, unrelaxing pursuit, the escapes and 
disguises of the victim, like the agonised turnings and doublings of 
the hunted hare — all this is depicted with an incessant and never- 
surpassed power of breathless interest. At last Caleb is formally 
accused by Falkland of robbery, and naturally discloses before the 
tribunal the dreadful secret which had caused his long persecution, 
and Falkland dies of shame and a broken heart. The interest of 
this wonderful tale is indescribable; the various scenes are set before 



880 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIX. 



US witli something of the minute reality, the dry, grave simplicity of 
Defoe. But in Godwin, the faculty of the picturesque, so prominent 
in the mind of Defoe, is almost absent : everything seems to he 
thought out, elaborated by an effort of the will. Defoe seems simply 
to describe things as they really were, and we feel it impossible to 
conceive that they were otherwise than so ] Godwin describes them 
(and with a wondrous power of coherency) as we feel they would be 
in such and such circumstances. His descriptions and characters 
are masterly pieces of construction ; or, like mathematical problems, 
they are deduced step by step, infallibly, from certain data. This 
author possesses no humour, no powers of description, at least of 
nature — none of that magic which communicates to inanimate objects 
the light and glow of sentiment — very little pathos: but on the 
other hand, few have possessed a more penetrating eye for that 
recondite causation which links together motive and action, a more 
watchful and determined consistency in tracing the manifestations of 
such characters as he has once conceived, or a more prevailing spirit 
of self-persuasion as to the reality of what he relates. The romance 
of ' Caleb Williams' is indeed ideal ; but it is an ideal totally desti- 
tute of all the trappings and ornaments of the ideal : it is like some 
grand picture painted in dead-colour. 

In 1799 appeared 'St. Leon;' in 1804, 'Fleetwood;' in 1817, 
' Mandeville ;' and in 1830, just before his death, ' Cloudesley.' 
These four works are romances in the same manner as ' Caleb Wil- 
liams;' but there is perceptible in them a gradual diminution in 
vigour and originality — we do not mean of positive but of relative 
originality. 'St. Leon' is, however, a powerful conception, executed 
in parts with a gloomy energy peculiar to this author. The story is 
of a man who has acquired possession of the great arcanum — the 
secret of boundless wealth and immortal life ; and the drift of the 
book is to give a terrible picture of the misery which would result 
from the possession of such an immortality and such riches, when 
deprived (as such a being must be) of the sympathies of human affec- 
tion, and the joys and woes of human nature. This novel contains 
several powerfully-delineated scenes, generally of a gloomy tone, and 
a female character, Marguerite, of singular beauty and interest. 

At the head — facile princeps — of the very large class of female 
novelists who have adorned the more recent literature of England, 
we must place Miss Edgeworth, born about 1768. This place she 
deserves, not only for the immense number, variety, and originality 
of her works of fiction, but also, and perhaps in a superior degree, 
for their admirable good sense and utility. 

Most of those who have undertaken the ill-requited but certainly 
most important task of writing for children have failed, from not 
having sufficiently considered the nature and character of the child- 
ish mind. They are perpetually haunted by the notion that it is 



CH.SJ>. XIX.] 



MISS EDGEWORTH. 



881 



indispensable to write down to their audience : they think it necessary 
to pLice the moral of their story offensively in the foreground : they 
do not consider this perpetually perking, as it were, of the moral in 
the face of the reader — so offensive in a work addressed to grown-up 
persons — is no less disgusting to children, however young. Children 
hate to be lectured at least as much as their elders; and, conse- 
quently, the great difficulty in writing for the very young is either 
entirely to conceal, under an interesting and striking narrative, the 
nauseous dose of morality which is to be administered, or, at least, 
to gild the pill as far as possible. The chief defect of Berquin, and 
other excellent and well-intentioned writers for childhood, is the 
leaving nothing to be discovered by the intelligence of the little 
reader; for children, like grown-up people, are exceedingly glad of 
the opportunity of employing the perceptive and comparative facul- 
ties of their minds ; nay, take the more pleasure in doing so, because 
those faculties have in general been but recently called into activity. 
Therefore they despise those feeble and affected writings in which 
the characters are either complete embodiments of some virtue or its 
corresponding vice; and their sense of probability is very much 
shocked by seeing represented in fiction what even their imperfect 
experience shows them to be never occurring in real life — i. e. 
characters of unmixed good or unmitigated evil, virtue invariably 
rewarded, and vice as invariably punished. Miss Edgeworth has 
written a complete literature for infancy .and youth. She has had the 
sense and courage to begin from the very beginning ; and the first 
tale of her admirable series is, if we remember well, a story in words 
of one syllable, and adapted for the very earliest age. From this 
she has passed on to the exquisite little tales contained in ' The 
Parent's Assistant,^ a collection to the first perusal of which no one 
ever looked back but with feelings of gratitude and delight; and 
then through the various collections under the titles of 'Popular 
Tales,^ ' Moral Tales,' and ' Fashionable Tales,' — a cycle of fictions 
which, including the novels of ' Patronage,' ' Leonora,' ' Belinda,' 
' Helen,' and ' The Absentee,' may boldly be said to contain more 
sound sense, acute observation of character, and applicability to 
practical life, than any set of works professing a didactic tendency. 
-In all, the primary qualities just mentioned are equally visible. 
Even in 'Frank' and ' Rosamond' — little stories for the almost infant 
mind — we perceive the same infallible and irresistible sense, the 
same ease and vivacity of narration, and the same exquisite percep- 
tion of character and the weaknesses of human nature. To those 
who confound form with matter in literary judgments it may seem 
preposterous to assign such high praise to a collection of tales for 
children; but to persons who know from experience the difficulty of 
writing effectively in this manner, our criticism, laudatory as it is, 
will not appear extravagantly favourable. There are few failings of 



382 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIX. 



the opening character — few of those passions and errors which, 
being common to all ages of human life, so easily grow from defects 
into vices, and from vices into crimes — which she has not with pene- 
trating eye pursued into the inmost foldings of the heart, and driven 
them forth with her gentle satire and admirable logic of good sense. 
She excels in reducing a folly, or a false virtue, " ad absurdum 
she is truly Socratic, in the manner by which she drives a fallacy to its 
last defences. She has invariably and perseveringly discountenanced 
all exaltation and enthusiasm ; and this incessant attention to the 
real and practical, however it may sometimes diminish her glory as 
a great artist, undoubtedly increases her utility as a moral teacher. 
In one class of characters she is almost unrivalled : no author has, 
with so much sympathy, penetration, and vivacity, exhibited the 
national peculiarities of the Irish — a nation which she has studied 
with peculiar interest and love. Her volume entitled ' Castle Rack- 
rent' is a kind of chronicle of the oddities and humours, the vices 
and generosity, of a series of Irish landlords, and contains a wonder- 
ful amount of acute observation. 

Miss Edge worth's never-failing success in the delineation of this 
kind of local character will warrant us in placing her at the head of 
a class of novelists almost peculiar to English literature, and which 
ought to form a subdivision in this part of our subject — we mean, 
writers whose works are devoted to the delineation of local manners 
and character. Thus, there are many excellent writers of fiction 
who have devoted themselves to the painting of the peculiar manners, 
oddities, and domestic life of Scotland and Ireland exclusively. 
John Gait, in a long series of novels, has confined himself to the 
minute delineation — as rich, as original, and as careful as the work- 
manship of Douw, Mieris, or Teniers — of the interior life of the 
Scottish peasantry and provincial tradespeople. The 'Annals of the 
Parish,' the supposed journal of a quaint, simple-minded Presbyterian 
pastor, give us a singularly amusing insight into the microscopic 
details of Scottish life in the lower classes. Gralt's primary charac- 
teristic is a dry, subdued, quaint humour — a quality very perceptible 
in the lower orders of Scotland, and which in his works, as in the 
national character of his countrymen, is often accompanied by a very 
profound and true sense of the pathetic. The more romantic and 
tragical side of the national idiosyncrasy has been exquisitely por- 
trayed in the touching tales of John Wilson, than whom, it should 
be remarked, no author has ever shown a finer eye for the beauties 
of nature, or a profounder feeling for the virtues and trials of humble 
life. In this department of local manners the Irish have peculiarly 
distinguished themselves ; as might, indeed, be expected, when we 
remember the intense vivacity of the Hibernian character, and the 
abundance of materials for the novelist afforded by the incessant 
social, religious, and political discord which for three centuries has 



CHAP. XIX.] 



LOCAL NOVELS. 



383 



never ceased to convulse that coimtrj. A long list of names 
presents itself to our notice, of which, however, it will suffice to say 
a few words of the principal — Lady Morgan, Banim, Crofton Croker, 
Carleton, 3Irs. Hall, Lever, and Lover. All these persons have 
devoted themselves, with more or less success, to the depicting the 
humours or the passions, the bright or dark, the light and shadow, 
of L-ish life. Some — as, for example, Banim — have attached them- 
selves more exclusively to the tragic, or rather melodramic, scenes of 
Irish society, generally in the peasant class; and though it is impos- 
sible not to appreciate in their works a very marked degree of power, 
picturesqueness, imag-iuation, and eloquence, yet these high qualities 
are often eclipsed by an exaggerated and ferocious energy which 
defeats its owq object, and renders the work ridiculous instead of 
sublime. In the Irish character there is no repose, and where there 
is no repose there can be no contrast — the only element of strong 
impressions. Other authors, again, as Crofton Croker, have attached 
themselves more particularly, and with more effect, to the merely 
romantic and imaginative features of the national legends and super- 
stitions; and the latter gentleman has produced a little collection 
of- fairy tales worthy to be placed beside the delicious ' Haus und 
Kindermachen' of the brothers Grimm. 

Of those who have devoted themselves to the delineation of purely 
English manners in all ranks of society, the number is so immense 
that it would be as useless as tedious to give even a catalogue of 
their names and works. We shall content ourselves with selecting 
a few of the most prominent, or rather such as appear typical, and 
as consequently will give, in each instance, the general idea of the 
class at whose head we place them ; and first, of the writers of what 
are called "fashionable novels'^ — i. e. such as pretend to depict the 
manners, habits, and sentiments of aristocratic life. There is no 
country in the world, assuredly, in which the middle and lower 
classes possess so much personal liberty, and consequently so much 
enlightraent and independence, as England ; but, at the same time, 
there is hardly any nation in which, generally speaking, there is 
such a tendency in each class to admire and ape the manners of the 
class immediately above it. Our present business is with the literary 
effect of this peculiar admiration of aristocracy. Its tendency has 
been to flood our literature with a preposterous amount of trashy 
writings, proposing to give a reflection of the manners and habits of 
high life. Frequently composed, and as a mere speculation, by 
persons totally unacquainted with the scenes they essayed to describe, 
and relying for their interest either on grotesque exaggerations of 
what they supposed to exist in those favoured regions — the Empyrean 
of fashion — or on coarse scandal and misrepresentation, these egre- 
gious books were either sign-post caricatures of what the authors had 
never seen, or were clumsy rechauffes of forgotten scandal, without 



384; 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIX. 



wit, sense, probability, or nature. The more extravagant, however, 
were these pictures, and the less they resembled the ordinary life of 
the reader, the more eagerly were they admired ; and it is not to be 
wondered at that the time should come when persons, either them- 
selves members of aristocratic society, or men capable of forming 
true ideas on the subject, should have taken in hand to give some- 
thing like a true picture of the life of these envied circles. Among 
the best of these fashionable novels are those of Lister (perhaps 
this gentleman's ' G-ranby' is as good a specimen as can be selected 
of this class). Lady Charlotte Bury, Mr. Ward, Benjamin D'Israeli, 
Lord Normanby, and Lady Blessington. The novels of Ward are 
distinguished by the author's attempt to unite with an interesting 
story a good deal of elevated philosophical and literary speculation ; 
so that many of his works — as, for instance, * Tremaine/ ' Le Yere/ 
' De Clifford,' &c, — are something which is neither a good narrative 
nor a collection of good essays. Either the philosophy impedes the 
narrative, or the narrative destroys the interest and coherency of 
the philosophy. But the writings of Ward, as well as of Lister, are 
valuable for the simple. and unaffected tone of their language, for 
the moral truth and elevation of their sentiment, and for the charm 
that can only be expressed by that most untranslatable of English 
words — " gentlemanliness.'' These merits are also in a very high 
degree possessed by such of James's novels as describe modern 
manners, many of which have considerable interest, of a gentle and 
subdued kind. Of Bulwer we have already spoken. 

Descending the social scale, we come to a very large and character- 
istic department of works — the department which undoubtedly 
possesses not only the greatest degree of value for the English reader, 
but will have the most powerful attraction for foreign students of 
our literature. This is that class of fictions which depicts the 
manners of the middle and lower classes : and here again we shall 
encounter a singular amount of female names. The first in point 
of time, and perhaps almost the first in point of merit, in this class, 
especially among the ladies, is Miss Austen, whose novels may be 
considered as models of perfection in a new and very difiicult species 
of writing. She depends for her effect upon no surprising adven- 
tures, upon no artfully involved plot, upon no scenes deeply pathetic 
or extravagantly humorous. She paints a society which, though 
virtuous, intelligent, and enviable above all others, presents the 
fewest salient points of interest and singularity to the novelist — we 
mean the society of English country gentlemen. Whoever desires 
to know the interior life of that vast and admirable body the rural 
gentry of England — a body which absolutely exists in no other 
country on earth, and to which the nation owes many of its most 
valuable characteristics — must read the novels of Miss Austen. In 
these works the reader will find very little variety and no picturesque 



CHAP. XIX.] 



HOOK — MRS. TROLLOPE. 



885 



ness of persons, little to inspire strong emotion, nothing to excite 
wonder or laughter; but he will find admirable good sense, exquisite 
discrimination, and an unrivalled power of easy and natural dialogue. 
Miss Ferriar has also written a number of novels, generally depict- 
ing with great vivacity and truth the oddities and affectations of 
semi-vulgar life, but her works are far inferior, as artistic productions, 
to the elegant sketches of Miss Austen. 

Of the purely comic manner of fiction there are few better 
examples than the novels of Theodore Hook. He is greatest in the 
description of London life, and particularly in the rich drollery with 
which he paints the vulgar efforts of suburban gentility to ape the 
manners of the great. There is not one of his numerous novels 
and shorter tales in which some scene could not be cited carrying 
this kind of drollery almost to the brink of farce. Many of his 
works — as ' Sayings and Doings' — consist of short tales, each 
destined to develop the folly or evil consequences of some particular 
inconsistency or affectation : thus the work just cited consists of a 
set of detached stories, each written on the text, as it were, of some 
common well-known proverb ; and though the narratives are of very 
slight construction, and do not contain very profound views of 
character^ they none of them are devoid of some incredibly droll 
caricatures of manners. What, for example, can be more irresistible 
than the Bloomsbury evening party in 'Maxwell,^ or the dinner at 
Mr. Abberley's in ' The Man of Many Friends V Hook's more 
exclusively serious novels are generally considered as inferior to 
those in which there is a mixture of the ludicrous ; and for one of 
the last works produced by this clever writer before his death, he 
selected a subject admirably adapted to the peculiar strength of his 
talent. This was 'Jack Brag,' a most spirited embodiment of the 
arts employed by a vulgar pretender to creep into aristocratic society, 
and the ultimate discomfiture of the absurd hero. Hook was a man 
of great but superficial powers, one of the most amusing conversation- 
ists of the day, an inimitable relator of anecdotes, a singer, and an 
improvvisalore ; but he was himself afflicted with the same passion 
for the society of the great as he has so wittily caricatured in Mr. 
Brag, and his life was passed in incessant but desultory literary 
labour as a novelist and journalist, in frequent disappointments, in 
debt, and in the empty applauses of the circle he amused. He died 
in 1842, leaving a large number of works, all of them exhibiting 
strong proofs of humour, but mostly deprived of permanent value 
by the haste perceptible in their execution. The best of them are, 
perhaps, '• Gilbert Gurney,' and its continuation, ' Gurney Married.' 

Very similar to Theodore Hook in the subject and treatment of 
her novels, and not unlike him in the general tone of her talent, is 
Mrs. TroUopo, whose happiest efforts are the exhibition of the gross 
arts and impudent stratagems employed by the pretenders to fashion. 



386 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIX. 



Mrs. Trollope's chief defect is coarseneRS and violence of contrast : 
she does not know where to stop, and is too apt to render her 
characters not ridiculous only, but odious, in which she offends 
against the primary laws of comic writing. Moreover, she neglects 
light and shade in her pictures : her personages are either mere 
embodiments of all that is contemptible, or cold abstractions of 
everything refined and excellent. Her best work is, perhaps, ' The 
Widow Barnaby,' in which she has reached the ideal of a character 
of gross, full-blown, palpable, complete pretension and vulgar assu- 
rance. The widow, with her coarse handsome face, and her imper- 
turbable, unconquerable self-possession, is a truly rich comic concep- 
tion. Mrs. Trollope's plots are exceedingly slight and ill constructed, 
but her narrative is lively, and she particularly excels in her charac- 
ters of goodnatured, shrewd old maids. She first became generally 
known to the literary world in 1832, by her relation of a residence 
of some years in the United States, in which she exhibited so unflat- 
tering a picture of American society, that our transatlantic neighbours 
have not yet recovered from the paroxysm of anger into which the 
rough strictures of Mrs. Trollope threw them. 

It would be a great injustice were we not to devote a few words 
of admiration to the charming sketches of Miss Mitford, a lady who 
has described the village life and scenery of England with the grace 
and delicacy of Groldsmith himself. ' Our Village' is one of the 
most delightful books in the language : it is full of those home, scenes 
which form the most exquisite peculiarity, not only of the external 
nature, but also of the social life of the country. In nothing is our 
nation so happily distinguished from all others as in the enlightenment, 
the true refinement, the virtue, and the dignity of her middle and 
lower classes, and in no position are those classes so worthy of admi- 
ration as in the quiet, tranquil existence of the country. She 
describes with the truth and fidelity of Crabbe and Cowper, but 
without the moral gloom of the one, and the morbid sadness of the 
other. Whether it is her pet greyhound Lily, or the sunburnt, 
curly, ragged village child, the object glows before us with something 
of that daylight sunshine which we find in its highest perfection in 
the rural and familiar images of Shakspeare. 

Passing over Smith, whose numerous novels are little more than 
repetitions or imitations of the works which were in fashion at the 
difi'erent periods when he wrote them, we come to Samuel Warren, 
who obtained an enviable reputation for vigour and originality so 
early as 1837, when he commenced contributing to 'Blackwood's 
Magazine' a series of tales entitled ' Passages from the Diary of a 
late Physician.' The nature of these narratives may easily be 
guessed from their title, and Warren very skilfully maintained the 
disgaise of a medical man, gained chiefly by his own early introduc- 
tion into a humble branch of that profession. The tales themselves 



CHAP. XIX.] 



WARREN. 



387 



are of various lengtbs, and yery unequal degrees of merit. They 
are all, with the exception of one or two (which are not important 
enough to change the general impression on the reader), of a. very 
tragic and painful nature — dark and agonising pages from the vast 
book of human suffering. The scenes are taken from almost every 
gradation of social life ; we have the last moments of the condemned 
forger, the slow martyrdom of a virtuous philosopher, the madness 
of the lover and the statesman, and two or three most impressive 
pictures of commercial rain, and the fatal effect of vice, ill-regulated 
passions, and a morbid indulgence of imagination. Perhaps the 
finest of these tales are those entitled ' The Spectre-smitten,' ' The 
Banker's Clerk,' 'The Statesman/ and 'The Forger.' The style, 
though occasionally rather too highly coloured, is very direct, power- 
ful, and unaffected ; and the too great prevalence of a tone of agony 
and extreme distress, which certainly injures the effect of the whole, 
by depriving the work of reliefs which is, above all, indispensable 
in painful subjects, is perhaps rather attributable to the nature of 
the subjects than to any defect of the artist. It is but just to 
remark, too, that this monotony of gloom and agony is not perceptible 
in these tales as they at first appeared, separately and at considerable 
intervals, in the pages of a magazine, though it is certainly objection- 
able in them when collected into a single publication. Encouraged 
by this success, Mr. Warren began the tale of ' Ten Thousand-a- 
Year,' which also appeared in 'Blackwood's Magazine.' This work 
portrays the unexpected elevation to immense wealth and importance 
of one of the most contemptible beings that the imagination can 
conceive, Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse, a vulgar, ignorant coxcomb of the 
lowest order, a linen-draper's shopman in Oxford-street, and suddenly 
exalted, through the instrumentality of some rascally attorneys, who 
have discovered a defect in a pedigree, to the third heaven of English 
aristocracy. The book is crowded with " scenes of many-coloured 
life," and with an infinity of personages, all vigorously, and some 
admirably drawn. The gradual development of the plot is carried 
on, not only with considerable skill and probability, but with a great 
deal more attention to detail than is usual in modern fiction ] and 
many of the scenes are highly dramatic and natural — for instance, 
the dinner at Mr. Quirk's ; the trial ; the suicide of Gammon at the 
end of the book, which is as finely worked up as anything in 
llichardson ; and the insanity of Lord Dreddlington. Mr. Warren 
is a barrister, and a distinguished writer on legal education ; and we 
cannot, therefore, be surprised that he should exhibit great and 
accurate knowledge, not only of the profession itself, but of the 
habits of its members. The work is undeniably a production of 
great skill and genius, and setting aside a little political partiality 
(for all Mr. Warren's good people are Tories, and his bad ones as 
32* 



388 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CTIAP. XIX. 



invariably Whigs), must be considered as giving a vivid, well-drawn, 
and impressive picture of modern English society. 

The greatest name in the contemporary literature of Great Britain 
is indubitably that of Charles Dickens, who first appeared before the 
public some twelve years ago, as the author of a short series of 
sketches written to fill the vacant columns of a London newspaper. 
These were very slight but charming descrij)tions of metropolitan 
or suburban life, and must be considered as the first breaking up of 
an entirely new literary vein. The subject is everyday life and 
everyday people," and no author ever showed a more delicate skill in 
appreciating and expressing the almost imperceptible shades of 
London life. The best sketches were those of a purely descriptive 
character, such as ' The Marine-store Shop/ Seven Dials,' ' The 
Streets;' in short, those in which some phase of London life, or one 
of the thousand appearances of London scenery, is set before us. 
Several of these sketches were little narratives, of which the most 
ambitious and elaborate are invariably the least effective ; while 
those embodying some slight trait of character and manners exhibited 
a victorious power of exciting pathetic impressions, and an infallible 
tact for the various shades of personal or professional oddity. It 
was easy to see that a perfectly original author had appeared, pos- 
sessing an inexhaustible knowledge of all the mysteries of London 
life, particularly in the lower class, and that rare and infallible 
evidence of genius — the power of extracting novelty and interest 
from the most ordinary and common details of society, from things 
which we are so familiar with that we cannot conceive how they can 
contain materials either for laughter or for tears. In 1837 began 
the publication, in monthly numbers, each containing about two 
chapters, of the humorous tale ' The Pickwick Papers,' which may 
be described as a succession of detached adventures, very slightly 
connected together by a thread of plot, full of the richest and raciest 
delineations of London scenery, characters, and oddities. Mr. Pick- 
wick himself, the citizen Don Quixote of the nineteenth century, is 
a personage as natural, as delightful, and as completely drawn as the 
inimitable hero of Cervantes. But what praise can be sufficiently 
enthusiastic for the admirable conception of Sam Weller, that inimi- 
table compound of wit, simplicity, quaint humour, and fidelity I The 
gamin de Paris" does not possess a more distinctive and attractive 
physiognomy than Dickens has here immortalised in this exquisite 
portrait of the Londoner; perhaps since Parson Adams literature 
cannot afford an instance of a personage so exquisitely true to nature, 
so intensely comic, so individual, and at the same time so perfect a 
type of a class, as this delightful creation. Of the inferior persons 
and the adventures it will perhaps suffice to say, that those which 
belong to London life — Boz's peculiar domain — are almost invariably 
exquisite : but in quitting the streets of the capital Dickens seems to 



CHAP. XTX.] 



dickens: PICKWICK. 



389 



leave beliind him much of his characteristic delicacy and power. 
Not but that many of his descriptions of country and provincial 
scenery are exceedingly rich and delicate ; but he seems ever most at 
home in the great Babylon, and appears to look upon every other 
object with the eye of one who, though a painter and a poet of rare 
merit, is still a Londoner — a "Cockney/^ Nothing can be more 
admirably true to nature and humorous than the supper-party of the 
medical students, the scenes of low life in which most prominently 
figure Mrs. Bardell, Mrs. Cluppins, and Mrs. Raddle, with her 
unfortunate henpecked husband. All the passages in which we 
behold any of the multitudinous variety of attorneys and attorneys' 
clerks — a most characteristic species in London — are unsurpassable ; 
it is indisputable that since Scott no author has appeared in European 
literature who has succeeded in producing anything like the impres- 
sion made by these truly original draughts from nature. The plot 
or intrigue of this work is absolutely nothing ; the personages flit 
before the reader like the phantoms of the magic-lantern ; but we 
forget all the improbability of the fable in the vivacity and fluent 
abundance of the incidents. This author is a striking proof of the 
truth that the same delicacy of mental organization which renders a 
man. susceptible to the impressions of the humorous and the comic, 
best enables him to command our tears. Many of the defects of 
this work are to be traced to the manner of its appearance, in 
detached portions. There is every reason to suppose, not only that 
it was published, but that it was also composed, in this desultory and 
fragmentary form ; and the increasing practice of giving to the world 
narratives in this manner is, we think, productive of so much injury 
to this branch of literature, that we cannot refrain from saying a 
few words on the subject. The immense development within a few 
years, both in England and other countries, of periodical literature 
or journalism, has induced almost all modern authors to publish 
works (even of continuous fiction) in this form. The consequence 
is that the writer, whatever be his genius, and however carefully he 
may have previously arranged the plan and outline of his work, 
finds himself exposed to a perpetual temptation of over-colouring 
each particular portion. He knows that the public expects in each 
monthly or weekly "feuilleton" something highly spiced and intensely 
interesting ; and is thus tempted to neglect that gradation, that pro- 
portion, that subordination of the parts to the whole, which is as 
necessary to the due effect of a novel as of a picture or as of a work 
of architecture. 

'The Pickwick Papers,' the success of which was enormous 
(100,000 copies having been sold, according to common report), was 
almost immediately followed by 'Nicholas Nickleby,' a'more regular 
and carefully constructed fiction, exhibiting no diminution of power, 



890 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CIIAP. XIX. 



London, though one important portion of the work is devoted to 
giving a most frightful picture of the atrocities perpetrated in cheap 
schools — a nuisance which Dickens's powerful expose in this novel 
tended mainly to diminish, if not altogether to abate. Mr. Squeers^ 
the ignorant, cruel, and rapacious schoolmaster, is a chef-d'oeuvre ; 
and the wanderings of Nicholas, with his broken-spirited protege 
Srnike, are full of variety and interest; particularly their adventures 
in IMr. Vincent Cruramles's troop of provincial actors. Among the 
serious characters in this tale are two usurers, Ralph Nickleby and 
Arthur Gride, which, as striking yet perfectly natural embodiments, 
have perhaps never been surpassed. 

With a fertility like that of Scott, Dickens very speedily appeared 
again before the public in ' Oliver T^ist,' a simple tale of the adven- 
tures of a charity-boy, who "falls among thieves" and is initiated, 
though without his innocence being corrupted, into all the mysteries 
of the London housebreakers and pickpockets. The " merry old 
gentleman," Mr. Fagin, a Jew who keeps a kind of boarding-house 
for a society of young thieves, and the acolytes who are grouped 
around this venerable professor of the art of appropriation, all these 
are as fine as anything in Smollett ; the Artful Dodger in particular 
is a gem, an absolute literary type; but not Smollett, nor Fielding, 
nor perhaps all the romance-writers whose works we possess, could 
have produced anything equal, in terrific reality and vividness, to the 
murder of Nancy and the wanderings of the rufiian Sykes. Sykes 
and his dog alone are enough to establish Dickens's fame as a great 
original writer. Nothing so prosaic in its subject, yet raised by the 
mere force of genius to a true intensity of horror, is perhaps to be 
found in fiction. The adventures of Oliver, the hero, are unnatural; 
but the true strength of the work consists in the other characters. 

The next work of our inexhaustible novelist was ' Master Humph- 
rey's Clock,' in which, under a general fiction not very probable or 
well imagined, the author intended to unite a number of detached 
stories. Of these we have two, ' The Old Curiosity Shop' and 
^ Barnaby E,udge.' The first is a powerful and impressive delinea- 
tion of the gambler's mania, exhibited in a miserable old being, 
tottering on the verge of the grave, and a number of subordinate 
personages, sometimes grotesque, as Quilp, but always stamped with 
vigour and consistency. Above all these, and in the thick atmo- 
sphere of misery, hopeless suiffering, and privation, floats the exquisite 
and angelic figure of "Little Nell,'' one of the most enchanting 
conceptions of grace and innocence — the more admirable, perhaps, 
as Dickens is not always very successful in such delineations. 
^ Barnaby Budge' is in some sense historical, as its chief action is 
the dreadful insurrection of 1783, called " Lord George Gordon's 
Biots," when the refuse of the London population, under the 
pretext of a dread of Popery, committed, during several days, the 



CHAP. XIX.] DICKENS : CHUZZLEWIT — CHRISTMAS TALES. 391 



most horrible disorders in the capital. These riots, and the chief 
personages who figure in them, are set before us with great but 
somewhat exaggerated energy, and this principal action is combined 
with the detection of a horrid fratricide supposed to have been com- 
mitted some years before. The long agonies of the unrepentant 
murderer are described with a power that reminds of the admirable 
episode of Sykes. 

In 1843 Dickens made a voyage to the United States, and 
described his impressions of the manners, &c., of the Americans in 
a book which is strangely unworthy of his powers. The impressions 
themselves are highly unfavourable to the Americans, and in this 
respect accord with the reports of almost every English traveller who 
has given to the world his personal observations on the republic. 
But many of the richest contents of his American note-book were 
transferred to the pages of ' Martin Chuzzlewit,' a narrative some- 
what resembling ' Nickleby/ which appeared in the year just mention- 
ed. This novel is one of the finest of his composition — not the 
American scenes, perhaps, for these have generally an air of exagge- 
ration which injures them ; but the adventures which occur before 
and after the hero makes his unfortunate and unsuccessful voyage 
across the Atlantic. Mr. Pecksniff, the architect, is a finished 
hypocrite — the TartufFe of morality, a sort of Mr. Squeers without 
the brutality. This tale contains, too, one of those exquisite person- 
ages which Dickens excels in inventing, and placing amidst his 
dramatis personce, as a kind of embodiment of his own gentle, 
generous, loving heart. Who can forget Tom Pinch, old Tom Pinch, 
with his guilelessness, his oddity, his exhaustless goodness of heart ? 
Opposed to this truly delightful creation we have Jonas Chuzzlewit, 
whose mean brutality and small tyranny is finely and consistently 
sustained. Even in Dickens there are few things finer than the 
episode of the murder committed by Jonas; and the pangs of remorse 
acting on a base and wolfish nature have seldom been more power- 
fully described. Nor are the comic scenes less varied or less excellent ; 
the dinner-party at Todgers's is one of the very finest things in the 
whole range of comic fiction, and immeasurably superior even to the 
far-famed " supper after the manner of the ancients'' in Smollett's 
* Peregrine Pickle.' 

Since the appearance of this rich and rapid succession of noble 
fictions, Dickens seemed to content himself with reposing on the 
laurels he has gained ; having produced no long works, simply 
reminding us of the existence of his undiminished power by publish- 
ing a series of little festival Christmas tales. Of these, four have 
ah-eady appeared, entitled 'A Christmas Carol in Prose,' ' The 
Chimes,' 'The Cricket on the Hearth,' and 'The Battle of Life.' 
They are all admirable for the benevolent genial spirit which they 
express, and display a degree of grace and fancy which is in every 



892 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIX. 



way worthy of the object for which they were written — the noble 
aim of inspiring the rich and happy with sympathy and compassion 
for the poor. They breathe the very spirit of Christmas-time — the 
highest praise which can be given. The best of them, as far as the 
story is concerned, is the first, though ' The Chimes' contains an 
immense power of fantastic imagination. They are all very short : 
the * Carol' describes the conversation, begun by a ghost, and con- 
tinued by a series of visions, embodying the Past, Present, and 
Future," of a coldhearted old miser, to the hearty benevolence so 
suited to Christmas ; the second is a goblin story ; and the third one 
of those delightful glimpses into very humble life which no author 
can embody like Dickens. Even should he write no more, he has 
done enough to deserve the love and admiration of posterity ; his 
works possess the highest and rarest of merits — that of complete 
originality both of matter and of form ; his view of life is generous, 
elevating, genial ; he sympathises with what is good and noble in all 
classes and conditions alike; he makes us love our kind, he makes 
us love the exercise of the huumbler and more modest virtues, he 
chronicles the minor accidents and impressions of life ; his writings, 
though describing the manners of the poorest and lowest classes of 
mankind, contain nothing which can shock the most fastidious taste ; 
and the only things he has held up to ridicule or detestation are 
vice, hypocrisy, or the pretensions of imbecile vulgarity. He is an 
author of whom England may be proud. 

The immense colonial possessions of Great Britain, and particu- 
larly her colossal empire in the East, combined with the passion for 
travelling so strongly manifested in the nation, have created in our 
literature a class of works which may be considered as forming 
almost a separate department of fiction. These are novels which 
have for their aim the delineation of the manners, scenery, &c., of 
distant countries; and as among these works the Oriental are 
naturally the most splendid and prominent, we shall take three which 
seem the most favourable specimens of this subdivision. They are 
different from each other in form, in tone, and in scope, but are 
equally distinguished for their cleverness and individuality. Of these 
Oriental novels, then, we select, as the most striking examples, The 
History of the Caliph Yathek,' by Beckford ; the romance of '■ Anas- 
tasius,' by Hope ; and the inimitable ' Hajji Baba' of Morier. The 
first of these fictions was as wild, strange, and dreamily magnificent, 
as the character and biography of its author — a man almost as rich, as 
splendidly luxurious, and as coldly meditative as the Comte de 
Montecristo, in Dumas' popular story. '■ Yathek' is an Arabian tale, 
and was originally published in 1784, in French, being one of the 
rare instances of an Englishman being able to write that difficult 
language with the grace and purity of a native. Being afterwards 
translated by the author into his mother tonguC; it forms one of the 



CHAP. XIX.] 



NOVELS OF FOREIGN LIFE. 



893 



most extraordinary monuments of splendid imagery and caustic wit 
which literature can afford. It is very short, and in some respects 
resembles (at least in its cold sarcasm of tone and exquisite refine- 
ment of style) the ' Zadig' of Yoltaire. But ' Yathek' is immeasur- 
ably superior in point of imagination, and in its singular fidelity to 
the Oriental colouring and costume. Indeed, if we set aside its 
contemptuous and sneering tone, it might pass for a translation of 
one of ' The Thousand and one Nights.' It narrates the adventures 
of a haughty and effeminate monarch, led on, by the temptations of 
a malignant genie and the sophistries of a cruel and ambitious 
mother, to commit all sorts of crimes, to abjure his faith, and to 
offer allegiance to Eblis, the 3Iahommedan Satan, in the hope of 
seating himself on the throne of the Preadamite sultans. The 
gradual development in his mind of sensuality, cruelty, atheism, and 
insane and Titanic ambition, is very finely traced ; the imagery 
throughout is truly splendid, its Eastern gorgeousness tempered and 
relieved by the sneering sarcastic irony of a French Encyclpediste ; 
and the concluding scene soars into the highest atmosphere of grand 
descriptive poety. Here he descends into the subterranean palace 
of Eblis, where he does homage to the Evil One, and wanders for a 
while among the superhuman splendours of those regions of punish- 
ment. The fancy of genius has seldom conceived anything more 
terrible than ^' the vast multitude, incessantly passing, who severally 
kept their right hands on their heart, without once regarding any- 
thing around them. They all avoided each other, and, though sur- 
rounded by a multitude that no one could number, each wandered 
at random, unheedful of the rest, as if alone on a desert where no 
foot had trodden.'' 

Hope, like Beckford, was a man of refined taste, luxurious habits, 
and possessed of a colossal fortune accumulated in commerce. His 
work, though very different in form from that of Beckford, was not 
unlike it in some points. ^Anastasius,' published in 1819, purports 
to be the autobiography of a Greek, who, to escape the consequences 
of his own crimes and villanies of every kind, becomes a renegade, 
and passes through a long series of the most extraordinary and 
romantic vicissitudes. The hero is a compound of almost all the 
vices of his unfortunate and degraded nation ; and in his vicissitudes 
of fortune we see passing before us, as in a diorama, the whole 
social, political, and religious life of Turkey and the Morea. The 
style is elaborate and passionate ; and this, as well as the character 
of the principal personage, 

" Link'd with one virtue, and a thousand crimes," 

reminds us, in reading ' Anastasius,' very strongly of the manner of 
Lord Byron. Indeed, this romance is very much what Byron 
"would have written in prose — the same splendid, vivid, and ever- 



394 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CIIAP. XIX. 



fresh pictures of the external nature of the most beautiful and inter- 
esting region of the world, the same intensity of passion^ the same 
gloomy colouring of unrepenting crime. 

But if the darker side of Oriental nature be presented to us in 
^ Vathek' and 'Anastasius/ in the former combined with the caustic 
irony of Yoltaire, in the second with the mournful grandeur of 
Byron, the ' Hajji Baba' of Morier will make us ample amends in 
drollery and a truly comic verve. This is the ' Gril Bias' of Oriental 
life. Hajji Baba is a barber of Ispahan, who passes through a long 
but delightfully varied series of adventures, such as happen in the 
despotic and simple governments of the East, where the pipe-bearer 
of one day may become the vizier of the next. The hero is an 
easy, merry good-for-nothing, whose dexterity and gaiety it is impos- 
sible not to admire, even while we rejoice in the punishment which 
his manifold rascalities drawn down upon him ; and perhaps there is 
no work in the world which gives so vast, so lively, and so accurate 
a picture of every grade, every phase of Oriental existence. Mr. 
Morier, ivho resided nearly all his life in various parts of the East, 
and whose long sojourn as British minister in Persia made him pro- 
foundly acquainted with the character of the people of that country, 
has most inimitably sustained his imaginary personage. The Hajji 
is not only a thorough Oriental, but intensely Persian, and a Persian 
of the lower class into the bargain ; a perfect specimen of his nation 
— the French of the East — gay, talkative, dexterous, vain, enter- 
prising, acute, not over scrupulous, but always amusing. The 
worthy Hajji, in the continuation of the story, comes to England in 
the suite of an embassy from " the asylum of the universe and 
perhaps nothing was ever more truly natural and comic than the way 
in which he relates his impressions and adventures in this country, 
his surprise at the condition of women among us, his admiration of 
the " moonfaces,'' and, above all, his astonished wonder at the 
" Coompany,'^ the great enigma to all Orientals. 

It now remains only to speak of one species of prose fiction — that 
which has for its subject the manners and personages of marine or 
military life. It may easily be conceived that, the former service 
being most entwined with all the sympathies of the national heart, 
the subdivision of marine novels should be the richest. The contrary 
might be naturally expected in France; and in France we accordingly 
find that though, particularly in modern times, numerous novelists 
have endeavoured to put in a picturesque and attractive light the 
manners and scenes of a sea-life, yet that it is the army which has 
supplied popular literature — the novel, the chanson, and the vaude- 
ville — with the types of character most identified with the national 
feeling and predilection. What the inilitairc is to the French 
public, the sailor is to the English : in the songs of the people, on 
their stage, in their favourite books, the "Jack Tar/^ the '^old Aga- 



CHAP. XIX.] NAVAL AND MILITARY NOVELS. 



395 



memnon" who followed Nelson to the Nile, is as perpetually recur- 
ring and indispensable a personage as the " vieux moustache/^ the 
grogneur de la vieille garde/' to the French. And this is natural 
enough. Each country is peculiarly proud of that class to which it 
owes its brightest and least disputable glory : as the Frenchman 
naturally hugs himself in the idea that France is incontestably the 
first military nation in the world, so the Englishman, no less naturally, 
is peculiarly vain of his country's naval achievements; not that in 
either case the former at all forgets or undervalues the naval triumphs 
of his flag, or the latter the military exploits of his; but simply 
because France is not essentially maritime, and England is, and 
therefore the natives of each attach themselves to that species of 
glory which they consider the peculiar property of their nation. 

At the head of our marine novelists stands Captain Marryat, one 
of the most easy, lively, and truly humorous story-tellers we possess. 
One of the chief elements of his talent is undoubtedly the tone of 
high, effervescent, irrepressible animal spirits which characterises 
everything he has written. He seems as if he sate down to compose 
without having formed the least idea of what he is going to say, and 
sentence after sentence seems to flow from his pen without thought, 
without labour, and without hesitation. He seems half tipsy with 
the very gaiety of his heart, and never scruples to introduce the 
most grotesque extravagances of character, language, and event, 
provided they are likely to excite a laugh. This would produce 
absurdity and failure as often as laughter, were it not that he has a 
natural iact and judgment in the ludicrous; and this happy audacity 
— this hit-or-miss boldness — serves him admirably well. Nothing 
can surpass the liveliness and drollery of his 'Peter Simple,' ^ Jacob 
Faithful,' or 'Mr. Midshipman Easy;' what an inexhaustible gallery 
of originals has he paraded before us ! The English national 
temperament has a peculiar tendency to produce eccentricity of 
manner, and a sea-life in particular seems calculated to foster these 
oddities till they burst into full blow and luxuriance. Marryat's 
narratives are exceedingly inartificial, and often grossly improbable ; 
but we read on with gay delight, never thinking of the story, but 
only solicitous to follow the droll adventures, and laugh at the still 
droller characters. Smollett himself has nothing richer than Captain 
Kearney, with his lies and innocent ostentation ; Captain To, with 
his passion for pig, his lean wife and her piano; or than Mr. Easy 
fighting his ship under a green petticoat for want of an ensign. This 
author has also a peculiar talent for the delineation of boyish 
characters : his Faithful and Peter Simple (the " fool of the fiimily") 
not only amuse but interest us ; and in many passages he has shown 
no mean mastery over the pathetic emotions. Though superficial in 
his view of character, he is generally faithful to reality, and shows 
an extensive if not very deep knowledge of what his old waterman 



396 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XIX. 



calls ^' human natur.'^ There are few authors more amusing than 
Marryat ; his books have the eiFervescence of champagne. 

Captains Grlasscock and Chamier, Mr. Howard and Mr. Trelawney, 
have also produced naval fictions of merit ; the two last authors have 
followed a more tragic path than the others mentioned above, and 
have written passages of great power and impressiveness ; but their 
works are injured by a too frequent occurrence of exaggerated 
pictures of blood and horror — a fatal fault, from which they might 
have been warned by the example of Eugene Sue. 

The tales called 'Tom Cringle's Log' and 'The Cruize of the 
Midge' are also works in this kind (though not exclusively naval) 
of striking brilliancy and imaginative power. In these we have a 
most gorgeously coloured and faithful delineation of the luxuriant 
scenery of the West Indian Archipelago, and the manners of the 
Creole and colonist population are reproduced with consummate 
drollery and inexhaustible splendour of language. They were the 
production of Mr. Scott, a gentleman engaged in commerce, and 
personally familiar with the scenes he described ; and the admiration 
they excited at their first appearance (anonymously) in ' Blackwood's 
Magazine' caused them to be ascribed to the pen of some of the 
most distinguished of living writers, particularly to that of John 
Wilson, the editor of the journal. 

Of the military novels we have but a few words to say : they are 
generally inferior to the same class of works in France. Mr. Gleig 
has recorded in a narrative form many striking episodes of that " war 
of giants" whose most glorious and terrific scenes were the lines of 
Torres Vedras, the storm of Badajoz, and the field of Waterloo ; and 
a number of younger authors, chiefly Irishmen, as Messrs. Lever 
and Lover, have detailed with their national vivacity the grotesque 
oddities and gay bravery of their countrymen, who never appear to 
so much advantage as on the field of battle. 



CHAP. XX.] 



COMEDY IN ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE STAGE AND JOURNALISM. 

Comedy in England — Congreve, Farquhar, &c. — Sheridan — The Modern 
Romantic Drama — Oratory in England : Burke — Letters of Junius — Modern 
Theologians: Paley and Butler — Blackstone — Adam Smith — Metaphysics: 
Stewart — Bentham — Periodicals: the Newspaper, the Magazine, and the 
Review — The Quarterly, and Blackwood — The Edinburgh, and the New 
Monthly — The Westminster — Cheap Periodical Literature. 

Comedy is essentially the expression not of Life, but of Society, 
It does not deal with the passions, but with the affectations and 
follies of our nature : it belongs, therefore, particularly to a highly 
civilized and artificial state of existence. Many of Shakspeare's most 
humorous creations are comic in the highest degree, but they are not 
in any sense comedies : they are something infinitely more elevated, 
more profound, more far-reaching; but they are not comedies. Exqui- 
sitely humorous as they are, the humor is not in them the primary 
element, the unmixed subject-matter of these inimitable delineations; 
it is united with tenderness, romantic passion, exhaustless poetic fancy; 
and therefore we call them Plays. Indeed, it may almost be maintained 
that humour is not the true element of comedy at all — that is, of 
comedy properly so named. Wit is the essence, the life-blood of 
comedy, and wit is as different from humour as from tragic passion. 
Wit is the negative, the destructive process — humour the positive, 
the reconstructive. Wit is an analytic, humour a synthetic opera- 
tion. The latter indeed is so demonstrably a higher power of the 
mind, that it includes the former, but with the addition of something 
more, and something, too, infinitely higher in its source and nature. 
The humorist must possess wit; but he must also possess tenderness, 
sympathy, love. In the language of algebra we may formulise it 
thus : wit + sympathy = humour. And in proportion as the affec- 
tions are an endowment of our nature far more elevated than the 
mere activity of our comparative or perceptive faculties (in the 
unusual delicacy and sensibility of which consists that power we call 
wit), in exactly the same measure is humour superior to wit. We 
may be proud to remember that humour is the distinguishing feature 
of the English national intellect, and the peculiar stamp of individuality 
which marks our literature. This circumstance alone would sufiice 
to account for the undeniable superiority of our national literature 
over that of all other civilized countries, in every point — of depth, 
of grandeur, of variety, of indestructible vitality. 



398 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. 



[CHAP. XX. 



This being granted, it will not be difficult to discover what are the 
social conditions most necessary to the production of a brilliant school 
of comedy in a given nation. As the stage in general must ever be 
the reflection of the life, the character, the colouring of the country 
•and epoch in which it appears, comedy must be the offspring of a 
highly artificial, corrupt, and intellectual era. As its pabulum^ its 
subject-matter, is folly, its aim being 

" To feed with varied fools the eternal jest," 

it may be most certainly expected to flourish at a time when civiliza- 
tion has not advanced so far as to obliterate those strong class-dis- 
tinctions which sharply mark the professions, habits, language, and 
manners of mankind, and at the same time when those elements are 
upon the point of being mingled into one unvaried mass. We can 
have no pure comedy now, because the manners of all classes, like 
their dress, have come to be so uniform that there remains nothing 
of conventional, of universally intelligible, sufficiently salient for the 
comic dramatist to lay hold of. The "frac noir'^ — the true equalized 
power of the nineteenth century — has levelled all men, like death. 
The follies, vanities, and eccentricities of course exist as much as 
ever, but they have been thrown inward ; and if we seek for oddities 
now, we shall find not classes but individuals, and, if faithfully 
represented on the stage, they resemble not types familiar to every 
spectator, but caricatures, often apparently extravagant. The conse- 
quence of all this is, that we have no comedy, but we have a vaude- 
ville — an excellent thing in its way, but very different from its pre- 
decessor. In England the reign of Charles II. was the period which 
most completely satisfies the conditions we have just essayed to 
establish, just as in France the reign of Louis XIV. The first- 
mentioned epoch produced Congreve, Wycherley, and Farquhar ; the 
second Moliere and Regnard. In the writings of the three great 
English wits there is seldom any trace of humour, and therefore 
nothing can be more different from Shakspeare. Wit is the reign- 
ing element, and witty dialogue perhaps was never so completely 
exhibited as in these admirable comedies. They are not natural in 
an absolute, though highly so in a relative sense : they are not true 
to universal but to local nature ; or rather we may say that the 
nature of their day was an unnatural nature. They were written, 
not for the court, nor for the people, in the true sense of the ward, 
but for the Town ; and they are inimitable for intense vivacity of 
sparkling dialogue, for the richest abundance of odd and extravagant 
character, for ingenuity of plot (generally, however, a mechanical 
ingenuity, arising rather from disguises, mistakes of persons, and 
errors of the senses, than from the play of passion, or the deceptions 
caused by vanity and self-love), and above all for an air of inexhausti- 
ble high spirits and gaiety. In all these works the chief defect is the 



CHAP. XX.] 



COMEDY OF CHARLES II. 



399 



stocking tone of immorality which pervades them. The characters 
are nothing but an unvaried crowd of sharpers, seducers, prostitutes, 
and butts : but it is fair to remark that in reading these dramas we 
seem to lay aside all our stricter notions of moral duty : as Charles 
Lamb acutely remarks, we seem to have got into a new world, where 
the old-fashioned distinctions of right and wrong have no currency. 
In point of art, their chief defect is allied to their principal merits : 
it arises partly from the restless and incessant sparkle of the dialogue, 
which ever glitters with an unappeasable activity, like the blinding 
ripple of a noonday sea; and, secondly, from the want of intellectual 
distinction between the personages; for the fools, dupes, and cox-^ 
combs are quite as brilliant and smart in their repartees as the pro- 
fessed and ostensible wits of the piece. Everything is epigram and 
point ; and though in many of these plays there are occasional 
touches of nature exquisitely true, delicate, and poignant, and even 
whole scenes which may serve as models of liveliness not inconsis- 
tent with probability, the general character of this school is certainly 
unsolid, and absolutely wearying from excess of sparkle and epigram. 
Assuredly no nation has produced anything in this artificial vein 
finer and more complete than the comedies of ' Love for Love,' ^ The 
Way of the World,' 'The Man of Mode/ 'The Country Wife,' 
'The Confederacy,' and '■ The Provoked Wife.' The popularity of 
these works was enormous : comedies and pamphlets formed nearly 
the sum total of the lighter literature of that age ; and though, not 
having their foundation in the deeper recesses of the human heart, 
they are now comparatively neglected, no man can have a true idea 
of the perfections of our noble language who has not made acquaint- 
ance with this class of writers. What Hazlitt says of Congreve is 
generally applicable to all the rest : " His style is inimitable, nay, 
perfect. It is the highest model of comic dialogue. Every sentence 
is replete with sense and satire, conveyed in the most polished 
and pointed terms. Every page presents a shower of brilliant con- 
ceits, is a tissue of epigrams in prose, is a new triumph of wit, a 
new conquest over dulness. The fire of artful raillery is nowhere 
else so well kept up. This style, which he was almost the first to 
introduce, and which he carried to the utmost pitch of classical 
refinement, reminds one exactly of Collins's description of wit as 
opposed to humour, — 

'Whose jewels in his crisped hair 
Are placed each other's light to share.' " 

The first of this remarkable class was Etherege, and the last 
Earquhar; though Sheridan (after a long interval, during which the 
comic stage had obtained a quite diiTerent direction) seems to have 
revived it for a moment itf all its brilliancy. The chronology of the 
principal names among them was as follows : Sir Greorge Etherege, 
laorn in 1636, died in 1683 ; his best comedy ' The Man of Mode.' 



400 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XX. 



Wyclierley, the author of ^ The Plain Dealer/ a comedy somewhat 
resembling ' The Misanthrope' and ' The Country Wife/ which may 
he advantageously compared with 'L'Ecole des Femmes/ born in 
1640, died in 1715. Congreve, the greatest of them all, celebrated 
not only as a comic dramatist, but as the author of ' The Mourning 
Bride/ a tragedy in the dr}'- classical French taste, but a work of 
great merit, 1670 — 1729 : his finest comedies are ' Love for Love/ 
* The Old Bachelor,' and ' The Double Dealer.' Sir John Vanbrugh 
(1672—1726) comes next, a great architect as well as a dramatic 
ai-tist, for he designed Blenheim. His plays are of a somewhat coarser 
texture than those of Congreve, but superior in a certain rich and 
genial glow : his master-pieces are ' The Belapse,' ^ The Provoked 
Wife/ 'The Confederacy,' and he kft unfinished the admirable 
fragment afterwards completed by Cibber under the title of The 
Provoked Husband.' The last of these authors was Farquhar, born 
in 1678, and who died at the early age of 29. His best-known 
comedies are ' The Constant Couple,' ' The Beaux' Stratagem/ and 
^ The Recruiting Officer,' all of which, though sufficiently immoral, 
exhibit less of that cool heartless depravity which marks the produc- 
tions of this class. 

By one of those revolutions of taste — regular as the seasons, or 
as the oscillations of the tide in the physical world — which takes 
place in literature generally and in every department of literature in 
particular, comedy in England acquired, after the brilliant period of 
which we have been speaking, a direction towards sentiment alism. 
The writings of Sterne very much contributed to this tendency, and 
Colman, Cumberland, and most of the modern writers for the stage, 
endeavoured to unite the pathetic and the broadly humorous. This 
class was begun by Steele ; and these comedies have lost the peculiar 
charm of gaiety, refined satire, and wit, without acquiring anything 
in exchange : the moral and sentimental parts are mawkish, tedious, 
and affected, and the laughable ones degenerate into gross farce and 
caricature. But the true old comedy, the admirable English comedy 
of Congreve and Wycherley, received a bright and momentary 
resuscitation in the person of Sheridan. This wonderful Irishman 
— as perfect an embodiment of the intellect of his country as his 
biographer Moore — was one of the political and literary comets of 
his day. Without fixity of purpose, without learning, without any 
of that political influence (the most important of all in a constitu- 
tional country like England) which arises from personal and moral 
respectability, he obtained as a parliamentary orator a brilliant 
though useless reputation in that age of giants when the eloquence 
of Chatham was yet ringing in the national ear, giving animation to 
the struggles of Pitt and Fox. As a dramatic author, Sheridan pro- 
duced three works which will ever be considered master-pieces ia 
their different styles — the two comedies entitled 'The School for 



CHAP. XX.] 



comedy: SHERIDAN. 



401 



Scandal' and ^The Rivals/ and the inimitable dramatic caricature 
of ' The Critic' The first of these is a regular comedy of intrigue, 
the persons all of the upper ranks of life : the dialogue is one inces- 
sant sparkle of the finest and most polished repartee ; and though 
the moral of the piece — the unmasking of a coldhearted hypocrite 
and pretender to virtue, and the forgiveness of his brother, a gay 
goodnatured rake — is not established but at the expense of some 
dangerous sophistries, and the confounding of virtue with hypocrisy, 
and the excusing of vice by the plea of generosity, this comedy is 
one of the triumphs of the English scene. Many of the situations 
are so exquisitely comic, though a large portion of the piece is passed 
in talk which does not advance the action, the habit of scandal and 
talebearing is so admirably ridiculed, and the tone of the whole is 
so brilliant and refined, that it is equally delightful when read or 
when acted. It contains much profound satire on the corruptions 
of society, as brilliantly expressed, though less animated by bitter- 
ness, as in the ' Figaro' of Beaumarchais, to which work it bears 
some little resemblance ; but in point of exquisite finish of form, in 
consummate elegance of manner, it is equal to Congreve himself — 
the highest possible praise. The other comedy we have mentioned 
— ' The Rivals' — depicts adventures of a broader cast, and characters 
less exclusively taken from polished society. ' The School for 
Scandal' seldom excites more than a smile, while ' The Rivals' keeps 
the spectators in a broad laugh. Nothing can be happier than the 
light but masterly sketches of character in this exquisite piece : the 
self-willed, blustering Sir Anthony; the generous Irish fortune- 
hunter ; the sentimental novel-reading Lydia, who can see no happi- 
ness but in disguises, persecuted attachments, and elopements; the 
inimitable Mrs. Malaprop, with her exquisitely good bad English ; 
and the never-to-be-forgotten Bob Acres. ' The Critic' is one of that 
numerous class of pieces which contains a double action — the scenes 
between the author, his friends and critics, and the rehearsal of the 
tragedy. It is impossible to say which is the best or most witty 
part of this comedy, the dialogue between Dangle, an empty-headed 
theatrical busybody; Sneer, the very concentrated essence of critical 
bitterness; Pufi", the bold impudent literary quack; and Sir Fretful 
Plagiary (a portrait of Cumberland), all alive with sore irritable 
sensibility; or the admirable extravagance of the " tragedy in the 
Shakspearian manner." 

The subsequent history of the English stage is very soon related, 
and not very exhilarating. In comedy the G-erman sentimental 
spirit to which we have alluded gradually gained ground : common 
types of patriotism, generosity, vulgar burlesque, and yet more 
vulgar elegance, have been reproduced usque ad nauseain. We 
have been sickened with never-failing tirades about the moral dignity 
of the British merchant, the noble virtue of the British farmer, and 



402 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. 



[chap. XX. 



the valour of the British soldier and sailor, who is always represented, 
in order to "tickle the ears of the groundlings" as able to thrash 
three Frenchmen, — and all this in a style as vulgar and conventional 
as the ideas. Nevertheless, it would be unjust to suppose that there 
are not many scenes, and even some characters, in the plays of 
Cumberland, Colman, E-eynolds, &c., exhibiting a power to do better 
things : but the general tendency of comic drama with us, as in 
France, has been towards the vaudeville — with this difference, that 
the vaudeville is essentially and peculiarly a French creation, and 
therefore a valuable type of French art; whereas in England it is 
either servilely copied or coarsely caricatured from that charming 
production of the French theatre. 

The most intensely national type of the English drama is the 
romantic drama — the school of Shakspeare. It may easily be con- 
ceived that some attempts should have been made to revive so 
admirable and national a mode of composition. Perhaps these 
essays form the only sound, healthy, and at all promising class of 
modern theatrical writing ; but even this class has a forced and hot- 
bed air, and is kept alive rather by the taste of a few than by the 
eager sympathy of the public generally. These works are imitative ; 
and, however beautiful they sometimes may be, they confer pleasure 
rather by recalling to us those forms of literature which we look 
back upon with the greatest pride and veneration, than by their 
unassisted merits. The romantic plays of Miss Baillie, and particu- 
larly of Sheridan Knowles (the most successful of our modern 
dramatists), are always interesting, and in some passages even excel- 
lent; but their invariable adoption of the Elizabethan diction not 
only produces a painful impression of the writer being afraid to 
trust purely to his own unassisted powers of poetry and passion, but 
carries also with it an air of sham, of mimicry — a confounding of 
the accident with the substance. Admirable as is the diction of that 
wonderful epoch, the diction is not the essential thing : at all events, 
it was the natural style of that day, only elevated, of course, and 
glorified by genius ; whereas now an imitation of it must ever wear 
a pitiable air of factitiousness and affectation. Many of Miss Baillie's 
' Plays on the Passions,' Knowles's * Hunchback,' ' Wife,' ^ Virginius,' 
and others, might be cited with great praise, but with an expression 
of just regret that they should be so injured by the patchwork air 
_of their diction, in which modern words and ideas jar so strangely 
with the tone of that glorious, easy, fanciful dialogue, so hallowed 
in our memory. Two or three men of an original and independent 
way of thinking have written dramas (designed rather for reading 
than representation) in which this defect has been "reformed," as 
the player says in ' Hamlet,' " indifferent well." Mr. Talfourd haa 
composed several pieces in which, though the style is a little too 
perceptibly modelled upon that of Ford and Beaumont and Fletcher, 



CHAP. XX.] 



ORATORY. 



this air of imitation is compensated for by the pure elegance of 
design, and the simple, direct, elevated pathos, and something too of 
an ideal severity reflected from the Greek dramatists. His tragedy 
of 'Ion' is, indeed, a refined and elevated work, of consummate 
finish in its parts, and breathing the lofty tenderness and all-embrac- 
ing humanity of sentiment which characterises the philosophic 
poetry of Wordsworth. Henry Taylor has essayed, and with no 
mean success, to revive, in a dramatic form, the picturesque and 
stormy life of the fourteenth century, in his noble work on the 
subject of 'Philip van Artevelde/ the brewer-king of Ghent. The 
picture (a vast and animated one) of the struggle between the 
infant liberties of the burgess class in Flanders and the oppressive 
and haughty feudalism, is delineated with no ordinary power ; and 
the central figure of this vast panorama is a grand and ideal concep- 
tion, whose chief fault is its want of accordance with the conceivable 
existence of such a character in so rude and fierce an age. But 
* Artevelde' is not a drama, but a dramatic poem — full of power and 
beauty, it is true, but totally incapable of representation ; and though 
' Ion' is interesting and successful on the stage, it is by no means a 
work addressed (as every real drama must infallibly be) to the tastes, 
sympathies, and comprehension of the multitude. 

Political disquisition, whether spoken or written, has in England 
a very striking peculiarity of tone : it differs from the mode of dis- 
cussion adopted in other countries at least as markedly as the popular 
and national character of Great Britain differs from that of any 
civilized state in ancient or modern history. The German dreams 
of everything, the Frenchman talks of everything, the Englishman 
reasons of everything. The Frenchman acts often without think- 
ing, the German is too occupied with his theories either to reason or 
to act, the Englishman thinks deliberately and acts decidedly. In 
France we find in general strong attachment to what is so expressly 
designated by the English term "claptrap." There is no country 
which has so long retained a taste for those worn-out topics of school- 
boy declamation, that shallow classicism of allusion, which swells 
the period with the names of Brutus, of Aristides, and of Themis- 
tocles — none where the threadbare pedantry of personification and 
prosopopoeia has become so engrained, as it were, into the national 
style. This was of course a consequence of the Be volution of 1789, 
a period of carnival masquing, when 

"Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, virorum," 

danced through speeches, pamphlets, and proclamations, " in all the 
mazes of metaphorical confusion." English public speaking, at the 
bar or in parliament, is eminently and essentially practical; and a 
British audience, whether in a public meeting, in the Houses of Lords 
and Commons, or a jury in a court of justice, while it will listen 



404 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XX. 



with patience to a cogent and practical reasoning, however inelegantly 
expressed, has no mercy upon mere flowery rhetoric or vain general 
declamation. Nothing is more fatal to eloquence, in its highest 
sense, than the air of being eloquent; and the object of all public 
speaking and writing being solely and simply to convince or persuade, 
it is self-evident that that orator or writer must be the best who 
produces the greatest practical result. The Greeks thoroughly 
understood this, as the English have done ; and there is, consequently, 
in the oratory of both nations a singular resemblance in point of 
directness, muscularity of expression, and practical application. 
The speeches of Chatham, Pitt, Fox, and Wyndham are perhaps the 
finest monuments of our parliamentary eloquence, and those of 
Erskine of forensic oratory ; and when in reading them, imperfectly 
reported as they often are, we are sometimes at a loss to explain the 
fact how they could have produced such effect as they really did, we 
forget that the very simplicity and absence of parade, which strikes 
us as meagre and colourless, must have been, at the time when they 
were delivered, a main source of their resistless power. In general 
it will be found that those speeches which read best are by no means 
those which were most effective when spoken. Our forensic oratory 
is generally marked by a singular sobriety and a careful exclusion of 
all rapturous and rhetorical enthusiasm; and therefore the pathetic 
passages, so rarely and sparingly introduced, have -all the power over 
our sympathies derivable from the impressiveness of subdued, 
restrained, involuntary passion. Chatham, Pitt, and Fox, immeasur- 
ably superior as they were, as parliamentary speakers, to their illus- 
trious contemporary, Edmund Burke, were undoubtedly inferior to 
him in vastness of mind and in grandeur of genius ; and yet the 
latter was seldom listened to with even moderate patience in the 
House of Commons : and the reason is, that the former were con- 
summate debaters., practical speakers ; while the latter was the elo- 
quent expounder of a philosophy too ethereal, too abstract, too sub- 
lime, for that practical and common sense atmosphere. As a political 
theorist, as a speculator on the history, character, and tendency of 
the British constitution, as the analyser of its principles, as the 
historian of its past and the prophet of its future. Burke occupies a 
place in the political and literary history of England which is quite 
peculiar. His speeches and pamphlets on the destinies of the first 
French Revolution, and of the then infant liberties of the United 
States, are perhaps as wonderful for their sagacity, their penetration, 
and for that intensity of predictive power — 

"the vision and the faculty divine" — 

as they are admirable for the splendid eloquence of their expression. 
They will form for ever the favorite models of style to the student 
of historical literature, to the orator, to the thinker ; and are among 



CHAP. XX.] 



THEOLOGIANS. 



405 



the most signal examples of that power by which, under the magic 
influence of G-enius, 

" Old Experience doth attain 
To something hke prophetic strain." 

But the most remarkable figure in the political drama of this 
period is that mysterious personage, the "Iron MasV of modern 
history, the admirable writer who launched his fierce diatribes under 
the name of Junius." The authorship of these letters is one of 
the few enigmas which time and investigation have not perfectly 
solved. Internal and circumstantial evidence points so clearly to 
Sir Philip Francis as the writer of these compositions, that moral 
certainiy is undoubtedly arrived at. Perhaps the literature of no 
country in the world can offer a finer example of intense, unscrupu- 
lous, yet always elegant and dignified invective. Every sentence is 
weighty with meaning, and pointed with the sharpest and most 
polished sarcasm ; and the air of honest indignant patriotism, which 
the author has so studiously and carefully preserved, makes us forget, 
as we read, the atrocious venom of party-spirit, and he unjustifiable 
attacks on private character, which abound throughout this able but 
flagitious collection of letters. 

We have devoted a short chapter to those great divines whose 
eloquence and learning have made them the fathers of the Anglican 
church ; who are our Chrysostoms and Augustines, or rather our 
Fenelons, Pascals, and Bossuets. The epoch which we are now 
treating was fertile in illustrious men, whose writings, consecrated, 
like those of Barrow, Taylor, South, and Fuller, to the service of 
Protestantism, were marked with differences proportioned to the age 
in which they wrote. They are not rich treasuries of faith, eloquence, 
enthusiasm, and boundless erudition — they are demonstrations of 
evidence, and answers to objections; they are not the production of 
the imagination, but of the reason. Among these writers the 
names of Paley and Butler are the most prominent. The former, 
in an extensive cycle of works, has investigated, first, the grounds and 
principles of moral philosophy generally, he has then advanced to the 
great outlines of morality and government, thence to the consideration, 
of the probabilities for and against the truth of the Christian history, 
and lastly he has given us a detailed examination of the writings of 
St. Paul. In these works, the ' Moral Philosophy,' the ^ Evidences 
of Christianity' (chiefly intended as a refutation of Hume's plausible 
objections to the truth of the evangelic history), and the ' Horae 
Paulinse,' we remark an acuteness of reasoning which has rarely 
been equalled, combined with a style so easy, familiar, and natural, 
that we are sometimes blinded to the sophistry which the author's 
inimitable air of bonhommie and good faith is occasionally employed 
to mask. His theory of moral sentiment is based upon the doctrine 
of self-interest ; a doctrine to which, however reluctantly, all specu- 



406 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. 



[CHAP. XX. 



lators must sooner or later reeur : and in his ' Natural Theology/ 
when he traces, through the whole creation, and particularly in the 
constitution of organized bodies, the proofs of a presiding wisdom, 
benevolence, and power in the Creator, it is impossible not to admire 
the extent of his knowledge of nature (particularly of physiology), 
the fomiliar appropriateness of the illustrations he selects, and above 
all the complete absence of all pedantry and scientific terminology. 

Butler, Bishop of Lichfield (who was born in 1692 and died in 
1752), confined himself to the investigation of the degree of anterior 
probability which would lead us to assign to such a revelation as that 
of Christianity such a character as we find it to possess. G-iven the 
phenomenon of a natural religion, he demands what might be 
expected to be the moral character of a revelation from the nature 
of the case ; and he shows it to coincide exactly with the revelation 
which we do possess. This great work is entitled ' The Analogy of 
Natural and Revealed Religion / and is one of the finest examples 
which literature can produce of close, clear, candid, and almost 
mathematical demonstration. Of course Butler's work treats only 
of the preliminary probabilities of the question ; and does not enter 
into the examination, on historical, critical, and philological grounds, 
of that mass of evidence which the New Testament contains, and 
which forms the basis of our belief in the facts of the Christian 
miracles. That task is executed partly by Paley, and partly by that 
vast cloud of commentators, such as Clarke, Prideaux, Lardner, &c., 
whose learning, industry, and candour do such honour to the reformed 
church of England. 

Though perhaps they may be considered as scarcely entering into 
the plan of our work, we think it our duty not to omit altogether 
the names of Blackstone, Adam Smith, Stewart, and Bentham; 
Blackstone having been the first to treat in a popular and untechnical 
manner of the history and nature of the laws of England ; Smith, 
the first systematic investigator of the science of political economy ; 
Stewart, the most distinguished of modern British metaphysicians ; 
and Bentham, the profound searcher into the theory of government 
and legislation. 

Judge Blackstone was the first of our lawyers who possessed a 
sufficiently strong tincture of letters to be able to give an elegant 
and readable epitome of the history of English law, rejecting the 
dry and repulsive technicality which characterises the profound and 
admirable Institutes of our great legists. Coke, Fortescue, Littleton, 
and Selden. The enormous mass of information buried, far out of 
the reach of any but the unwearied professional student, in the 
ponderous tomes of our old judges and reporters, Blackstone pre- 
sented, in 1765, in a form elegant, accessible, and interesting: and 
when we reflect upon the vastness and complication of our legislative 
and executive system, and the thousand elements, Roman, mediseval, 



CmiP. XX.] STEWART — EEXTHAM ADAM SMITH. 



407 



municipal, feudal and parliamentary, which combine to form that 
wonderful compound, the British constitution, it is impossible to 
express too warmly the gratitude which not only every Englishman, 
but every civilized man, should feel towards Blackstone for having 
placed, in an intelligible and accessible form, the history of what can 
never be devoid either of philosophical interest, or influence upon 
the destinies of human liberty. 

Adam Smith's famous ' Wealth of Nations' was the first attempt 
towards laying down, on a great scale, the principles of political 
economy. He was the first to demonstrate the fundamental axioms 
of commerce, manufactures, and the division of labour. This great 
work has been justly reproached with want of systematic order and 
completeness of arrangement : but it is distinguished for the sound- 
ness of its views in many points exceedingly important in themselves, 
and which, before Smith's time, had never been satisfactorily investi- 
gated : as, for example, the division of labour, the theory of rent, 
and the principles of advantageous international commerce. It is, 
also, admirable for the singular clearness and appropriateness of the 
illustrations employed to exemplify^ the various parts of the argu- 
ment ; and though more recent labourers in the great field of statis- 
tics and political economy — such as Malthus, Ricardo, Mill, Senior, 
MacCulloch — have profitably cultivated many portions of the field, 
Smith deserves the credit of having first broken up the surface, and 
shown the extent and fertility of the ground. 

In metaphysical science it is, we fear, incontrovertible that Grreafc 
Britain is less distinguished than in most other branches of human 
knowledge; at least that she is incontestably inferior to G-ermany. 
It is singular enough that metaphysics have been more cultivated iu 
Scotland than in England — nay, that the Scottish intellect, appears 
to possess a peculiar tendency and aptitude to this kind of disquisi- 
tion. In the present age, at least, it is Edinburgh which has pro- 
duced the most distinguished of the metaphysicians of Great Britain ; 
though Scotland has no names to show in any degree comparable, we 
will not say to Leibnitz and Kant, but even to Fichte, Schelling, or 
Hegel. Perhaps it will not be unjust to take Dugald Stewart as the 
most marked name among our modern school of metaphysicians — at 
least since the date of Chillingworth, Hobbes, Locke, and Berkeley. 

There remains another and most important branch of knowledge 
— only the more important from its very difficulty, which has deterred 
men of adequate powers from concentrating upon it their systematic 
attention. This is the science of legislation, and the theory of 
reward and punishment. Jeremy Bentham was undoubtedly the 
first among us to enter upon this new and unexplored career. The 
eccentricity of his manners, his simple and unworldly enthusiasm, 
the boldness and novelty of his theories, — all this, combined with 
the oddity of hia style, the grotesque pedantry of his language, the 

3-i 



408 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XX. 



strange uncouth terminology which, he thought it necessary to invent 
for his science, and, above all, the repulsive dryness and complexity 
of a multitude of definitions, limitations, divisions, and subdivisions, 
— all these things tended to blind his countrymen to the importance 
of his political and juridicial theories and reasonings. England is 
eminently the country of the practical ; and the most fatal character 
which a philosophical investigator can acquire is that of a visionary 
or an enthusiast. Bentham's writings were distinguished by so 
much novelty in the matter, and such fantastic oddity in the manner, 
that they were received by the general public of England with con- 
siderable distrust, and even hostilit}'-; and his reputation, now 
deservedly high and every day rising still higher, has met with very 
curious vicissitudes. His theories, having gradually obtained a 
great reputation on the Continent, and particularly in France, have 
been divested of the strange and repulsive peculiarities of their 
author's manner, and have come back to us embodied in clear and 
philosophical language. Thus Bentham's fame had made the tour 
of Europe before it was firmly established in the country of its 
birth. His deductions are often made with almost geometrical 
severity : and if men were pieces of mechanism, and subject to no 
disturbances in their conduct from causes too capricious and irregular 
to be appreciated by science, his principles would be not only appli- 
cable, but would produce the effect which he hoped would result 
from them, in the annihilation of crime, poverty, and oppression. 
But we do not calculate so logically as Bentham supposes ; and the 
greater part of our actions are dictated, in the first instance, not by 
pure reason, or a balancing of the good and evil that will accrue 
from a particular line of conduct in given circumstances, but rather 
by passion, prejudice, or an indistinct interest, which we afterwards 
endeavour to harmonise with the deductions of moral logic. Ben- 
tham's life was very long, active, and benevolent : he was born in 
1748, and lived to the great age of ninety-four. The ^Popular 
Fallacies,' the ' Essay on Codification,' the ' Defence of Usury,' are 
deservedly held to be monuments of admirably-combined industry, 
acuteness, and originality. 

Journalism — that remarkable and distinctive feature of modern 
literature — has been cultivated in England with all the activity that 
niight have been predicted from the general intelligence and civiliza- 
tion of the country, from the perfect freedom of discussion which 
our nation has so long enjoyed, and also from the popular nature of 
our government, which gives every citizen a strong personal interest 
in all political questions. Our journals, of every kind, have been 
generally distinguished from those of other countries by two or three 
striking peculiarities. Till recently, every journal, whether news- 
paper, magazine, or review, was perfectly miscellaneous in its con- 
tents, discussing political questions, giving criticisms on books or 



CHAP. XX.] 



JOTJRXALISM. 



409 



works of art, reporting the progress of science, — in short, reflecting 
the multiform interests of society. Our journals were, indeed, what 
Hamlet tells us actors are — the abstract and brief chronicles of the 
time." This was owing in some measure to the expense of books 
and publications in England, which has always been enormous as 
compared with other countries, and which rendered it impossible for 
ordinary readers to subscribe to many periodicals so that each was 
obliged to be in some measure encyclopgedic. But as the field of 
curiosity has enlarged, special journals, each devoted to some parti- 
cular class of information, have become more numerous, and natu- 
rally at the same time much cheaper. Another peculiarity of English 
journalism is the strict incognito which it has always been the fashion 
for the contributors to preserve. This proceeds, perhaps, from the 
reserve of the English character; or from the fear of personal interest 
interfering with the impartiality of the writer : and all the attempts 
that have been made (with what possible hope of advantage is not 
quite clear) to introduce among us the practice, so universal in France 
and G-ermany, of the writer signing his name at the foot of his com- 
position, have been uniformly unsuccessful. This incognito, however, 
applies only to criticism and political disquisition ; for the writers 
who contribute poetry and fiction to our journals do not think it 
necessary to preserve their incognito. 

By the word JS^ewspajjer we understand, in England, a gazette of 
politics, general information, and advertisements, appearing in a 
sheet or sheets at intervals, in general not greater than a week. The 
Magazine (a term peculiar to England) is a miscellaneous periodical, 
published for the most part monthly, containing original disquisitions, 
prose fiction, or poetry, and generally of an amusing and varied 
character. The Revie2V is a publication of a much more grave and 
ambitious cast : it contains no admixture of original narrative or 
poetical matter, but is a series of essays, or articles, ostensibly criti- 
cisms of the works whose titles are placed at the head of the disqui- 
sition. But these articles are by no means, necessarily, mere critiques 
of the works apropos of which they purport to be written. The 
latter are frequently quite insignificant in themselves ; but are taken 
merely as the peg upon which is hung a general, and often admirably- 
written, disquisition on the subject in question. 

The history of journalism in England coincides, in the date of its 
origin, in its general characteristics and vicissitudes, and in the causes 
which have contributed, at particular periods, to advance or retard 
its development, with the annals of this important branch of activity 
in other countries of Europe. All the great political parties have 
their special organs in the periodical press; and perhaps the best 
way of giving an idea of this kind of writing in England will be by 
classing the most eminent and poj^ular journals under the respective 
opinions advocated in their pages. In a constitutional government, 



410 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XX. 



composed, like that of England, of three distinct elements, there 
will naturally be three principal shades of party feeling; — the Tories, 
or advocates for the status in quo of the constitution, who dread the 
encroachments of popular opinion, and are enthusiastic maintainors 
of monarchism and aristocracy — Conservatives, in short. The chief 
organs of this powerful, wealthy, and intelligent party (which, how- 
ever, is generally deficient in activity, and acts naainly by its weight 
— its vis inertice) are, among the reviews, ^The Quarterly,' and, 
among the magazines, * Blackwood's' and 'Eraser's.' The first-men- 
tioned work is undoubtedly one of great influence and importance; 
the contributions are admirably written, and are generally by the 
most distinguished men of the day. This journal was established at 
the very agitated period of 1809, to counteract the danger of those 
liberal opinions which were at that time almost menacing the integ- 
rity of the Constitution ; and it was for a long time conducted by 
William Gilford, the translator of Juvenal, and the author of the 
'Baviad' and^'Masviad,' two of the most bitter, powerful, and resist- 
less literary satires which modern days have produced. Gilford was 
a self-taught man, who raised himself, by dint of almost superhuman 
exertions and admirable integrity, to a high place among the literary 
men of his age. Distinguished as a satirist, as a translator of satires, 
and as the editor of several of the illustrious but somewhat neglected 
dramatists of the Elizabethan age, his writings, admirable for sin- 
cerity, good sense, and learning, were also strongly tinged with 
bitterness and personality. Many other distinguished supporters of 
Conservative doctrines were contributors to 'The Quarterly,' — Cro- 
kerj the witty, brilliant, sarcastic Canning; and, more recently, 
Southey. This journal is at present conducted by Lockhart, Walter 
Scott's son-in-law and literary executor. 

Advocating the same doctrines, though in language less solemn 
and dictatorial, ' Blackwood's Magazine' must be considered as having 
played, and as long likely to play, a very prominent part. It is 
exceedingly miscellaneous in its contents ; and in its pages some of 
the most distinguished writers of poetry and fiction have made their 
debuts. 'Blackwood' must be held to have done good service to 
pure taste by the publication of a rich and masterly series of trans- 
lations (chiefly by Hay, Merivale, &c.) of the Greek epigrams — a very 
peculiar and exquisite class of productions. It was in ' Blackwood,' 
too, that Warren made his first appearance before the public, as the 
anonymous author of the 'Passages from the Diary of a late Physi- 
cian' and the novel of 'Ten Thousand a- Year.' The sketches of 
sea-life and West-Indian scenery, mentioned by us in a preceding 
chapter with very high commendation, first appeared in this periodical 
under the titles of ' Tom Cringle's Log ' and ' The Cruize of the 
Midge.' It would be tedious were we to attempt to enumerate all 
the powerful, splendid, or humorous narratives, all the genial and 



CHAP. XX.] THE EDINBURGH — NEW MONTHLY. 



411 



eloquent political biographies (such as those of Pitt and Burke), 
or all the penetrating and animated reviews of books and systems, 
"which have appeared in ' Blackwood' since its establishment in 1814. 
We will only advert to a series of contributions so truly original in 
form, and so happy in execution, that they may be considered as 
constituting an absolute and peculiar species. We allude to the 
exquisitely humorous and eloquent 'Noctes Ambrosianse,^ a collec- 
tion of imaginary conversations between the supposed editor and 
contributors (real persons under fictitious and exaggerated masks), 
in which all the topics of the day are passed in review with a singular 
union of profound speculation, fervid eloquence, and the broadest 
and most extravagant gaiety. These are supposed to be chiefly the 
composition of John Wilson, long the editor of the journal, a man 
of almost universal accomplishment, and celebrated as a moral 
philosopher, as a poet, a critic, a publicist, a humorist, and a sports- 
man. In his ' Isle of Palms,^ and ' City of the Plagae,^ Wilson 
shows himself to be a poet of no mean order, following the peculiar 
school of Wordsworth : in his ' Margaret Lyndsay/ and ' Lights and 
Shadows of Scottish Life,' he has given a beautiful and eloquent 
picture of the peasant existence of his native country; and under 
his character of " Christopher North" (his pseudonym as editor of 
' Blackwood') he has performed the same office for the scenery of 
Scotland, as in the prose tales, just mentioned, he had done for the 
joys and woes, the virtues and sufferings, of its inhabitants. 

The second great subdivision of public opinion, or what may be 
called the Constitutional Liberal party, is represented by ' The 
Edinburgh Review,' established in 1802 by a small party of young 
men, obscure at that time, but ambitious and enterprising, who were 
all destined to attain a high degree of distinction. ' The Edinburgh' 
founded its claim to success upon the boldness and vivacity of its 
tone, its total rejection of all precedent and authority, and the 
audacity with which it discussed questions previously held to be 
"hedged in" with the "divinity" of prescription. 'The Edinburgh' 
was an absolute literary Fronde; and its founders — Brougham, 
Jeffrey, Sidney Smith, Hallam, &c. — were soon convinced that they 
had not erred in calculating upon an extraordinary degree of success. 
The criticisms (many of which were retrospective, that is, discussing 
the merits of past eras in the history and literature of England and 
other countries) were marked by a singular boldness and pungency; 
and. in contemporary and local subjects the ' Beview' exhibited a 
power and extent of view which made its appearance, in some 
sense, an era in journalism. The critical articles are supposed to 
have been chiefly contributed by Jeffrey, many by Scott (though the 
total variance of his political sentiments with those advocated in the 
work may make us more surprised that he should have contributed 
at all than that he should have confined his labours to merely 
34* 



4 



412 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XX. 

literary subjects), whilst Smith and Brougham, and more recently 
Macaulay, have united history, politics, and literature. The latter 
has produced many noble articles on these subjects (for example, 
those on Machiavelli, on Cromwell, &c.), and Smith treated political 
questions with a richness of comic humour, and irresistible dry 
sarcasm, employed generally in exhaustive reasoning — in the reductio 
ad absurdum — which is not only exquisitely amusing, but is full of 
solid truth as well as pleasantry. 

With reference to the Liberal party, ' The New Monthly Maga- 
zine' occupied at one time a similar position to that which ' Blackwood' 
does in relation to the Tory opinions. This journal (the continua- 
tion of one of the earliest of English periodicals) is exceedingly 
inferior in general literary talent to any of those which we have 
mentioned : it is pitched altogether in a lower key, both as regards 
politics and belles-lettres ; but at the same time it cannot be accused 
of gross partiality and misrepresentation ; a charge from which none 
of the journals above described can be said to have been always free. 
Its strength consists in the novels which have from time to time 
appeared, in its pages, in the manner of the feuilleton^ and in the 
gay pleasantry which is generally to be found in its articles. It has 
been conducted by a succession of distinguished humorists and 
novel-writers — Theodore Hook, Thomas Campbell, Capt. Marryat, 
and Thomas Hood — and contains a large mass of excellent fiction. 

The two great parties of Tory and Whig, monarchical and popular, 
which we have been speaking of, are strictly constitutional. The 
remaining one, the youngest in point of origin, but which is rapidly 
gaining strength and consistency, by no means scruples to advocate 
what are called organic changes in our form of government. This 
party — the ultra-liberal, the democratic, the Radical, as it has been 
nicknamed — is possessed rather of intelligence, restlessness, and 
ambition than, as yet at least, of influence or weight ; but it has its 
organ like its great rivals. This is ' The Westminster Review,' a 
journal sustained with very considerable power and energy: but it is 
rather in certain departments of antiquarian . and artistic literature 
that ' The Westminster has created itself a section of admirers : the 
educated classes in England sympathise too little with the doctrines 
advocated in this journal for it to obtain a very general circulation. 
The ' Quarterly,' ' Edinburgh,' and ' Westminster' (like the gener- 
ality of reviews) appear every three months : the magazines, in 
almost all cases, are monthly. 

Besides these, there are of course innumerable publications of a 
local or special kind, devoted to the furtherance of some particular 
interest or of some science of art. Thus theology, law, history, 
medicine, physics and their separate branches, commerce, colonies, 
agriculture, manufactures, and even the most apparently limited 
sciences; geology, palseontology, numismatology, even railroads^, mines, 



CHAP. XXI.] WORDSWORTH, AND THE LAKE SCHOOL. 413 

and the art of galvano-metallurgy, have each their separate journal 
or journals. Each art, each pursuit, each whim or amusement is 
represented by some periodical, generally of merit and possessing a 
considerable circulation. 

But we have, also, a large and increasing mass of information 
given to us in a variety of other periodical works, many of which 
are sold at a price inconceivably small, if we consider the ordinary 
costliness of books in England : such, for example, as the publications 
by Constable and Chambers in Scotland, and the prolific brood of 
* Family Libraries,' 'Cabinet Cyclopaedias,' and penny journals. 
These works, by which a great extent of useful, if not very profound, 
knowledge is placed at the disposal of the labouring classes, have in 
most cases been exceedingly successful, and are calculated to give a 
foreigner a high idea of the intellectual activity and enterprise of 
the English people ; — an impression which will become still stronger 
when he finds the contents of these collections to be, in almost every 
case, well selected, well arranged, decorous and moral, written 
always with respectable, and often with extraordinary ability. 



CHAPTEH XXL 

WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, AND THE NEW POETRY. 

Wordsworth and the Lake School — Philosophical and Poetical Theories — The 
Lyrical Ballads — The Excursion — Sonnets — Coleridge — Poems and Criti- 
cisms — Conversational Eloquence — Charles Lamb — The Essays of Elia — 
Leigh Hunt — Keats — The Living Poets — Conclusion. 

The throne of English poetry, left vacant by the early death of 
Byron, is now unquestionably filled by Wordsworth. It was a 
species of revolution which seated the author of ^ Childe Harold' 
upon that throne : it is a counter-revolution which has deposed " the 
grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme." The 'English Bards' 
was Byron's 18th Fructidor; the publication of 'The Excursion' 
was his Waterloo. But in the fluctuation of popular taste, in the 
setting of that current, which, flowing from the old classicism, has 
carried us insensibly, but irresistibly, first through Romanticism, and 
has now brought us to a species of metaphysical quietism, there have 
been many temporary changes of direction ; nay, some apparent 
stoppages. Despite the eff'ort and impulsion of the Byronian poetry 
— the poetry of passion — there were writers who not only retained 



4 



414 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XXI. 

many characteristics of the forms that had to appearance been 
exploded, but even something of the old tone of sentiment; modified, 
of course, by the aesthetic principles which were afterwards to be 
completely embodied in such a cycle of great works as constitutes a 
school of literature. Thus Crabbe, with his singular versification (a 
kind of me zzo-t ermine between the smart antithetic manner of Pope 
and the somewhat languid melody of Goldsmith), combined a gloomy 
analysis of crime and weakness with pictures of common life delineated 
wuth a Flemish minuteness of detail ; and the traditions of the purely 
classic school survived in the diction of Rogers and the exquisite 
finish of Campbell. These poets are the connecting links between 
the two systems so opposite and apparently so incompatible : and it 
is not surprising that these writers, both of whom have deservedly 
become classics in our language, should exhibit, in the difference of 
feeling and treatment perceptible when we compare their first works 
with their last, a perfect image of the gradual transition of public 
taste from the one style of writing to the other. They both began, 
the former in ' The Pleasures of Memory,^ and the latter in * The 
Pleasures of Hope,^ as imitators of Akenside (himself an imitator 
of Milton) and of G oldsmith ; while in their later works we trace a 
gradually increasing tendency towards the more passionate and lyric 
tone of modern poetry. In Rogers's exquisite poem of ' Human 
Life,' in his ' Italy,' in his charming songs and fugitive pieces, we 
find him gradually receding farther and farther from his first models : 
and in examining the works of Thomas Campbell we perceive a still 
stronger proof of the same transition. * The Pleasures of Hope,' 
published at the very early age of twenty-four, was absolutely a 
reproduction of the tone and feeling of ' The Traveller :' but if we 
follow Campbell through his tender and pathetic narrative poem of 
^Gertrude of Wyoming' and his admirable lyrics — national and 
patriotic, and among the finest in any language — Ve shall see that 
in him, as in the general state of literary feeling reflected in his 
works, a complete and vast change had taken place. In literature 
nothing can ever be perfectly destroyed or obliterated, nothing can 
exist without producing an influence on remote times ; and poetry 
therefore will ever bear something of an eclectic character. 

It is the philosophy of Wordsworth — his theory, religious, social, 
and moral — that has most deeply coloured the poetry of the present 
day in England. He has exercised upon the literature of his coun- 
try an influence far more permanent and powerful than that which 
was communicated to the mind of Europe by the splendid innova- 
tions of Byron, although it was not so intense and rapid in its first 
development. The Lake School (so called because its founders re- 
sided chiefly among the picturesque scenery of the lakes of Cumber- 
land and Westmoreland, and have described with enthusiastic fond- 
ness not only that beautiful mountain region, but also the simple 



CHAP. XXI.] THE LAKE SCHOOL. 415 

virtues and pastoral innocence of its inhabitants) was founded by 
"Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey; of whom the former must be 
considered as the most industrious apostle and expounder of its 
doctrines. These doctrines are not of a mere aesthetic character : so 
far from it, indeed, that their £esthetic deductions are simply au 
application to art, of principles of faith and reasoning of the most 
elevated and all-embracing character. Their poetry is, in short, 
nothing but an embodiment, in a particular form, of a theory which, 
whether true or false, involves the highest concernments of man in 
his relation to Grod, to nature, to his fellow-creatures, and to himself. 
These writers are in some sense the Quietists, the Mystics, the Qua- 
kers of the poetic fraternity. As critics, the chief object of their 
attacks was the conventional language, so long considered as insepa- 
rable from poetry. They considered that the ordinary speech of the 
common people, being founded on the most general and universal 
feelings of the mind, and expressive of the most extensive class of 
wants and ideas, was a more faithful, philosophical, and durable 
vehicle for thought than the ornamented and ambitious phraseology 
heretofore deemed essential to poetry, although subject, as it was, to 
every caprice of fashion and taste. Nov were their ethical doctrines 
less bold. Strong passions, splendid and striking actions, revenge, 
ambition, unbridled love, all that had hitherto been considered as 
the very stuff and material of poetical impressions, they held to be 
wanting in the higher attribute of dignity and fitness for the artist's 
purposes. All in our nature, that either indicates, generates, or 
proceeds from a selfish motive, they held to be demonstrably less 
sublime than the tranquil virtues, the development of the affections, 
and the incessant effort of the soul to unite itself by meditation and 
reverent aspiration with God himself. Thus, casting down, at the 
feet of the Divinity, the passions of our nature, they of course were 
the iconoclasts also of the idols of human reason. For the acute 
speculator, the pryer into the material creation, the philosophaster, 
the quack and empiric of science, they express the most intense 
contempt ; being too apt to confound the legitimate exercise of our 
intellect and curiosity with the petty, unfeeling, irreverent spirit of 
the 

"Philosopher, a fingering slave, 
One that would peep, and pry, and botanise 
Upon his mother's grave." 

In proportion as the world becomes more civilized, the splendida 
vitia will, so to say, sink in value in our moral exchange ; and the 
day may come when courage and military energy, for example, will 
be considered as the necessary barbarism of a savage state, and the 
exploits of a Charles XII. and a Napoleon will be looked back upon 
with a half-pitying, half-incredulous wonder. That the human race 
is yet arrived at this point of philosophy and civilization does not 



416 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XXI. 



very evidently appear; but the doctrines of Wordsworth's school 
are an attempt to anticipate this millennium of innocence and virtue. 
In the same way as the ordinary sentiments of poetry are rejected 
Iby the Lake School, the ordinary subjects of it have no less been 
changed. The materials of many of their works, particularly of 
the earlier ones, are the adventures and sentiments of the very hum- 
blest class of human life, and such as, in themselves, would appear 
to defy any power of rendering them interesting and attractive. 
Thus the heroes of ' Peter Bell ' are a cruel carrier and his ass ; an 
idiot boy forms the whole subject of another poem ; and an old 
pedlar is the chief personage in the noble fragment of ' The Excur- 
sion.' The diction is, of course, characterized by similar singula- 
rities. Peculiarly awake to the defects of that brilliant and ingenious 
poetry which was introduced into England from France at the 
Restoration, and whose chief representatives are Prior, Waller, and 
Pope, the Lakists appear to have shut their eyes to its incontestable 
merits ; or, if they allow the existence of those merits, they consider 
them as of so low an order, and purchased so dearly, that they prefer 
the simple pathos, the rude picturesqueness, of the old English 
ballads to all the sparkle and ingenuity of the Poets of the Intellect. 
Wordsworth's earlier diction was marked by a humility and even 
meanness of phrase ; and the ballads, published in 1798, excited an 
universal uproar of ridicule. Both the system, and the ridicule it 
gave birth to, were naturally somewhat exaggerated : it is notj there- 
fore, surprising that those very journals, such as ' The Quarterly,' 
' The Edinburgh,' and ' Blackwood's Magazine,' which overwhelmed 
the ^Lyrical Ballads' on their first appearance with ridicule, should 
have gradually become admirers, if not warm supporters, of Words- 
worth's poetical and moral opinions. There can, however, be no 
question that, in his first publications, he carried his system much 
too far ; and the Lake School, in their eagerness to escape the Idols 
of the Theatre, have sometimes manifestly fallen under the influence 
of the Idols of the Den. One thing, however, is 'incontestable; the 
new school of poetry draws its inspiration from a truly elevated 
source. With these writers, poetry is but an embodiment and 
expression of faith. Their works are not the productions of mere 
intellectual dexterity ; but are monuments of the profoundest con- 
viction, of the stiblimest aspirations after what is good and beautiful 
and true. Poetry, with them, is a religion ; and they, like the bards 
of the heroic age, are not artists only, but priests and hierophants. 
In Wordsworth, poetry, which is but another name for the reverent 
study of nature, embraces all knowledge, all sanctity, all truth. 
With him it is 

"The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 
The guide, the guardian of my heart; and soul 
Of all my moral being." 



CHAP. XXI.] 



WORDSWORTH. 



417 



The prominent feature in Wordsworth's system, of mingled aesthe- 
tics and ethics, is the belief that external nature is not the mere 
lifeless echo of the voice of Grod, but the voice itself : and that the 
stream, the cloud, the leaf are not altogether inanimate and feeling- 
less ; but that they have a consciousness and a language of their own, 
audible and intelligible to all who will reverently listen ; but most 
audible, most intelligible to the poet; whose only difference from 
other men consists in his greater fineness of ear for that universal 
hymn of nature. This leading idea will be found, also, in the more 
lofty meditations of the Platonic dialogues. These ideas Plato ob- 
tained, we know, from his master Socrates; and they came originally, 
in all probability, from the East ; for Oriental poetry bears much of 
this peculiar stamp of mysticism. A great deal of this platonisra is 
to be found embodied in the poetry of the Elizabethan era; not 
only in the great work of Spenser, where it is indeed peculiarly 
perceptible; but even in the productions of men whose reputation, 
then very great, has not been able to resist the destroying power of 
time — in the poems, for instance, of Sir John Davies, of Phineas 
Fletcher, and of Silvester. In the Indian poetry this diffusion, 
through all nature, of consciousness and of feeling, tends directly to 
a species of sublime pantheism : in Wordsworth, the same dogmas, 
made subservient to the doctrines of the Christian revelation, acquire 
a still more pure and ethereal character. If we examine the whole 
collection of Wordsworth's poems, we shall find that, while he has 
remained faithful to the ethical part of his theory, he has involunta- 
rily been obliged to renounce a great deal of what was peculiar in 
his art; that is, its peculiar language. That extreme simplicity of 
diction and imagery, which he formerly seemed to consider the only 
true vehicle of poetical impressions, was obviously too little in 
accordance with his elevated and abstract doctrines to be retained, for 
any length of time, as his poetical language. Thus, while an un- 
learned peasant would have found nothing in Wordsworth's early 
narratives and songs which he would not have perfectly understood, 
as far as the words were concerned, the deductions, the drift, the 
moral results would have remained, and ever will remain, as unin- 
telligible to such a reader as if they were couched in the most arti- 
ficial and ornamented rhetoric. Many of Wordsworth's finest 
productions — as, for example, the admirable ^Laodamia,' his Sonnets, 
and nearly all ' The Excursion' — are, as far as the diction and versi- 
fication are concerned, written in strong discordance with the poet's 
own theory of poetical expression : and are so far from exemplifying 
an extreme simplicity, and the use of the most popular or even 
rustic phraseology, that they are absolutely among the most highly 
finished and elaborate specimens of artificial diction which the Eng- 
lish language can show. Milton, Spenser, Akenside, Thomson, are 
undoubtedly among the most scholastic of our poets; and yet we do 



418 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XXI. 



not think it too much to say that the language of these learned 
writers is more intelligible to the great body of readers than the 
centemplative style of ' The Excursion : ' and hence it is that the 
poets we have just mentioned are really more popular- — that is, read 
by a greater number of persons, particularly of the humbler classes 
— than Wordsworth is now, or is ever likely to be. The really great 
benefit which he has conferred upon his art, is that of showing future 
writers the necessity of thinking, and seeing, and describing for 
themselves ; and not accepting at second-hand, from any model how- 
ever admirable, any set of words or images to which a conventional 
idea of beauty is attached, and hoping that thereby any strong im- 
pressions can be excited. 

Many of the smaller detached poems to be found in the ' Lyrical 
Ballads' are absolutely unequalled. What renders them so remark- 
able is the pure and lofty tone of philosophical morality, which gives 
a weight and dignity to apparently the most trivial subjects. Nothing 
seems inserted in them for the sake of the mere words; and the 
result is that the diction has that exquisite directness, simplicity, and 
grace which forms the indefinable charm of the Grreek epigrams. 
The Odes have, perhaps, something in them rather too mystical; 
and may be censured for a certain want of clearness and intelligible- 
ness : but there is not one of them which does not contain some 
passage, some phrase, such as no poet but Wordsworth could have 
produced. The smaller poems in the ballad measure are those which 
are perhaps most universally known. Who has not read 'The 
Fountain,' ' Matthew,' ' We are Seven ' ? 

But Wordsworth's great work is indubitably ' The Excursion.' 
This is a fragment of a projected great moral epic, discussing and 
solving the mightiest questions concerning God, nature, and man, 
our moral constitution, our duties, and our hopes. Its dramatic 
interest is exceedingly small ; its structure is very inartificial and 
the characters represented in it are devoid of life and probability. 
That an old Scottish pedlar, a country clergymaa, and a disappointed 
visionary should reason so continuously and so sublimely on the 
destinies of man, is in itself a gross want of verisimilitude ; and the 
purely speculative nature of their interminable arguments 

"on knowledge, will, and fate," 

are not relieved from their monotony even by the abundant and 
beautiful descriptions and the pathetic episodes so thickly interspersed. 
It is Wordsworth, too, who is speaking always and alone; there is 
no variety of language, none of the shock and vivacity of intellectual 
wrestling : but, on the other hand, so sublime are the subjects on 
which they reason, so lofty and seraphic is their tone, and so deep a 
glow of humanity is perceptible throughout, that no reader, but such 
as seek in poetry for mere food for the curiosity and imagination, 



CHAP. XXI.] 



WORDSWORTH. 



419 



can study this grand composition without ever-increasing reverence 
and delight. Christianity is here exhibited under its most divine 
aspect ; and the oracles of truth are pronounced in words of more 
than mortal sweetness. 

In 1815 appeared 'The White Doe of Rylstone/ the only narra- 
tive poem of any length which "Wordsworth has ever written. The 
incidents are of a simple and exceedingly mournful kind, turning 
chiefly on the complete ruin of a north-country family in the civil 
wars : but the atmosphere of mystical and supernatural influences in 
which the personages move, the superhuman purity and unearthli- 
ness of the characters, and above all the part played in the action 
by the white doe, which gives name to the work, — all these things 
contribute to communicate to the production a fantastic, unreal, and 
somewhat affected air. In a narrative, clearness, directness, simpli- 
city are, above all things, necessary ; and no beauty of imagery and 
versification, no purity of ideas will suffice to please us where these 
are wanting. In some of his shorter narratives, ' Hartleap Well,' 
the beautiful tale of ' The Boy of Egremont,' and above all the 
unsurpassable ' Laodamia,' Wordsworth has amply shown his power 
of uniting, to his unequalled grandeur of meditation, all the charms 
of a rapid and natural narrative. Perhaps the last of these is the 
finest tale of the kind in any language : and in many other little 
works — as 'Michael,' 'Ruth,' and 'The Female Yagrant' — the 
diffuseness of the manner is more than compensated by the beauty 
and verity of the matter. 

A very large proportion of this author's more recent works (he 
has been all his life a most industrious author, and has now reached 
his seventy-sixth year) consists of sonnets. Of this difficult, and, 
at first sight, ungrateful species of composition, apparently so little 
suited to the peculiar genius of our language, we have in English 
literature many admirable examples. Its merits are thus insisted 
upon by Wordsworth himself in the following beautiful lines : — 

"Scorn not the Sonnet: Critic! you have frown'd, 

Mindless of its just honours: with this key 

Shakspeare unlock'd his heart ; the melody 
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound ; 
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound ; 

Camoens sooth'd with it an exile's grief: 

The Sonnet glitter'd a gay myrtle-leaf 
Amid the cypress with which Dante bound 
His visionary brow: a glowworm lamp, 

It cheer'd mild Spenser, call'd from Faery-land 
To struggle through dark ways ; and when a damp 

Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand 
The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew 
Soul-animating strains — alas! too few." 

The sonnets of Wordsworth are in no sense inferior to the finest 
examples, we will not say of Shakspeare, Sidney, and Milton only, 
but of Petrarch or Filicaja. He has perfectly appreciated the true 
35 



420 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XXI. 



aim and rule of this kind of writing. Whether the prevailing 
emotion be patriotic enthusiasm, religious fervour, or the tenderer 
influences of beautiful scenery, historic spots of national interest, or 
the impressions of art, he never fails to give that unity of feeling, 
that gradual swell of gentle harmony — rising, like a summer wave, 
till it softly breaks into melody in the last line — which is the peculiar 
charm and merit of this most difficult kind of composition. Many 
of his sonnets are connected together by a predominant tone or key- 
note ; and thus form complete works — a treasury of every charm of 
though!; and grace of execution. 

The literary character of Samuel Taylor Coleridge resembles some 
vast but unfinished palace : all is gigantic, beautiful, and rich ; but 
nothing is complete, nothing compact. He was all his days, from 
his youth to his death in 1834, labouring, meditating, projecting : and 
yet all that he has left us bears a painful character of fragmentari- 
ness and imperfection. His mind was eminently dreamy ; he was 
deeply tinged with that incapacity of acting which forms the 
characteristic of the German intellect : his genius was multiform, 
many-sided ; and for this reason, perhaps, could not at once seize 
upon the right point of view. No man, probably, ever existed who 
thought more, and more intensely, than Coleridge ; few ever possessed 
a vaster treasury of learning and knowledge ; and yet how little has 
he given us ! or rather how few of his works are in any way worthy 
of the undoubted majesty of his genius ! Materials, indeed, he has 
left us in enormous quantity — a store of thoughts and principles, 
particularly in the department of aesthetic science — golden masses 
of reason, either painfully sifted from the rubbish of obscure and 
forgotten authors, or dug up from the rich depths of his own mind j 
but these are still in the state of raw materials, or only partially 
worked. Of complete and substantive productions, all that we have 
of Coleridge are the following. — A small number of odes and lyrics, 
doubtless of extraordinary splendour and brilliancy, but still too 
much marked by a perceptible straining after grandeur and energy, 
as if the poet were lashing up his indolent enthusiasm by convulsive 
efforts ; an admirable translation, or rather paraphrase, of the 
' Piccolomini' and ' Death of Wallenstein,^ executed under Schiller's 
own eye , a volume of miscellaneous prose essays, entitled ' The 
Friend;' the tragedy of 'Remorse' and 'Zapolya;' the 'Lectures 
on Shakspeare and two or three lyrical poems, of which we shall 
give a somewhat more detailed criticism. During the greater part 
of his life, too, he was exceedingly poor : and his perpetual struggles 
to obtain bread by his pen obliged him, in many instances, to engage 
in tasks for which his peculiar mental constitution was completely 
unfit; — as, for example, the occupation of a political journalist. 
He began life as an Unitarian and republican; his intellectual 
powers were chiefly formed in the transcendental schools of Germany; 



CHAP. XXI.] 



COLERIDGE. 



421- 



but he ultimately became from conviction a most sincere adherent 
to the doctrines of the Anglican church, and an enthusiastic defender 
of our monarchical constitution. Though the lyrics to which we 
have alluded (the finest of which are the odes ' On the Departing 
Year/ and that supposed to be written "at sunrise in the Valley of 
Chamouni") are somewhat injured by their air of effort, they are 
indubitably works of singular richness, and exquisitely melodised 
language. The translations of the two members of Schiller's 
Trilogy of ^ Wallenstein' are so admirable that they are worthy of 
being compared with original poems of no mean order. Nothing 
can be more free from stiffness, coldness, or any sign of the ideas 
being those of another poet. It is true that Coleridge's mind was 
in no degree dramatic; and therefore the variations (which are 
exceedingly numerous, and often exquisitely happy) which he has 
made from the text of the Grerman, are generally rather beautiful 
developments of some train of reflection, only hinted at in the 
original, than any new strokes of character or increased vivacity of 
action. Coleridge's variations from his original are all of augmenta- 
tion, or of evolution, never of condensation ; for he was great rather 
as an observer, a describer, and a meditator, than as an embodier. 
No reader can fail to remark, as an example of this, the beautiful 
verses in which he describes the ancient popular mythologies and 
superstitions. This lovely passage is the expansion of a mere hint of 
Schiller's, conveyed in a couple of lines. 

That Coleridge had no power of true dramatic creation is strongly 
proved by his tragedy of ' The Remorse ;' in which, in spite of very 
striking features of character (as in Ordonio), and a multitude of 
incidents of the most violent kind, he has not produced a drama 
which either excites curiosity or moves any strong degree of pity. 
What is most beautiful in the work is all pure description, and in no 
sense advances the action or exhibits human passions. It is strange, 
perhaps, but yet by no means unintelligible, that a man who was so 
unsuccessful in creating emotions of a theatrical kind should have 
been a most consummate critic of the dramatic productions of others. 
Till he wrote, deep and universal as had been the admiring love — 
almost the adoration — of the English for Shakspeare, there still 
remained, in their judgments, something of that de haul en has 
tone which characterises all the criticisms anterior to Coleridge's 
* Lectures on Shakspeare.' Coleridge first showed that the creator 
of ' Hamlet' and ' Othello' was not only the greatest genius, but 
also the most consummate artist, who ever existed. Nothing can 
give us a higher opinion of the nobility of Coleridge's mind than 
that he was the first to make some approach to the discovery of those 
laws which, expressly or intuitively, governed the evolutions of the 
Shakspearian drama — that he possessed a soul vast enough, deep 
enough, multiform enough, to give us some faint idea of the dimen- 



422 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XXI. 



sions, the length, and breadth, and depth, of that huge sea of truth 
and beauty. 

Of the poems by which Coleridge is best known, both in England 
and abroad, the most universally read is undoubtedly ^ The Rime of 
the Auncient Marinere,^ a wild, mystical, phantasmagoric narrative, 
most picturesquely related in the old English ballad measure, and 
in language to which is skilfully given an air of antiquity in admirable 
harmony with the spectral character of the events. The whole 
poem is a splendid dream, filling the ear with the strange and floating 
melodies of sleep, and the eye with a shifting vaporous succession 
of fantastic images, gloomy or radiant. The wedding-party stopped 
on their way to the feast by the "bright-eyed marinere,^^ the awful 
fascination by which the guest is obliged to hear and the wanderer 
to tell his tale, the skeleton ships and the phantoms which play at 
dice for the soul of the mariner, the punishment and repentance of 
the man who "shot the albatross," — all this is wound up into one 
splendid tissue of cloudy phantoms. We read on, with that kind 
of consciousness of half-reality, that sensation of indistinct surprise, 
with which we are carried onward in our dreams. Extravagant and 
unreal as it all is, that important quality of harmony of tone is 
scrupulously kept up ; and hence the pleasure we experience : we 
are placed in a new unearthly atmosphere, and all glimpses of the 
real world are carefully avoided. 

The poem of ^ Cbristabel,' and the fragment called ^ Kubla Khan,' 
are of the same mystic, unreal character : indeed, Coleridge asserted 
that the latter was actually composed in a dream — an affirmation 
which may well be believed, for it is a thousand times more unin- 
telligible than the general run of dreams. It is a dream, perhaps ; 
but it is an opium-dream — "segri somnium'^ — without so much as 
that faint coherency which even a dream must have to give pleasure 
in a picture or in a poem. Like ^ The Mariner,' like the odes, like 
everything that Coleridge ever wrote, it is exquisitely versified. In 
the hands of a great sculptor marble and bronze seem to become as 
soft and as elastic as living flesh ; and Coleridge seems to possess a 
similar dominion over his language. It puts on every form, it 
expresses every sound : he almost writes to the eye and to the ear : 
our rough, pithy English, in his verse, breathes all sounds, all melo- 
dies : — 

"And now 'tis like all instruments, 
Now like a lonely flute ; 
And now it is an angel's song, 
That makes the heavens be mute." 

But in ^ Christabel/ which has some slight pretensions to be an 
intelligible narrative, or, at least, part of an intelligible narrative — 
for we have a maiden who meets in a forest with a fiend disguised as 
an earthly damsel, and who apparently defeats the evil spirit's 



CHAP. XXI.] 



COLERIDGE. 



423 



inacliinations — the mixture of two realities (both dream-realities, 
but one as it were within the other, like a tragedy within a tragedy, 
as in ^ Hamlet/ or as the picture of a picture in a picture) is not 
harmoniously subordinated ; and the effect is, of course, fatal to the 
poem as a work of art. 

In point of completeness, exquisite harmony of feeling, and 
unsurpassable grace of imagery and language, Coleridge has left 
nothing superior to the charming little poem entitled ^Love, or 
G-enevieve,' Perhaps the English language contains nothing more 
perfect : the very gentleness, ardour, and timidity of youthful pas- 
sion — the "purple light of love" — is breathed throughout. 

Coleridge's chief reputation, during his life, was founded less upon 
his writings than upon his conversation; or rather, what may be 
called his conversational oratory. Possessing, in a degree very 
unusual in modern society, and particularly rare in England (where 
this kind of display is little in accordance with the laconism, the 
reserve, the positivisme, and the extreme bashfulness of the national 
character), a most inexhaustible flow of eloquent imagery, and a 
ready command of the harmony of speech, Coleridge's conversation 
— if it could be called conversation, where he had all the talk to 
himself — must have resembled those disquisitions of the Grreek 
philosophers of which the dialogues of Plato are merely a literary 
embodiment. Starting from a casual observation on any subject, 
Coleridge would wander on through the whole infinitude of know- 
ledge with a profuseness of illustration, a profoundness of theory, 
and a rich and soothing melody of language, which those who knew 
him describe as having produced a kind of fascination in his hearers; 
and would scatter, as he went, such stores of reading, such new and 
sublime ideas on art, literature, and history, that, although his hearers 
often found themselves, at the end of the disquisition, enormously 
far from the point of departure, their journey had been so delightful, 
had given them such glimpses into the sunny realms of the ideal and 
the pure heaven of truth, and had enriched them with such treasures 
of thought and sentiment, that they felt neither weariness nor sur- 
prise. They were carried, like the knight of Ariosto on his hippo- 
griff, upon the sublime wings of Coleridge's imagination ; and gave 
free way to the magic of the hour. Of this wonderful discourser 
might be said what Homer tells us of Nestor, that " From his tongue 
his speech streamed on, like silent flakes of ever-falling snow." 

It is in his innumerable fragments, in his rich but desultory re- 
mains (published posthumously under the title of ^ Table-Talk') — in 
casual remarks scribbled like Sibylline leaves, often on the margins 
of borrowed books, and in imperfectly reported conversations, that 
we must look for proofs of Coleridge's immense but incompletely 
recorded powers; it is from these alone that we can gather the 
disjecta membra poetce ; and reconstruct, however imperfectly, the 
35* 



424 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XXI. 



image of this great tlainker and imaginer. From a careful study of 
these we sball conceive a high admiration of his genius ; and a deep 
regret at the fragmentary and desultory manifestation of his powers. 
We shall, also, appreciate the vastness and multiform character of a 
mind to which nothing was too dif&cult, or too obscure; a noble 
tone of moral dignity " softened into beauty " by the largest sym- 
pathy; and, above all, an admirable catholicity of taste, which could 
unerringly pitch upon what was beautiful and true, and find its 
pabulum in all schools, all writers; perceiving, as it were intuitively, 
the value and the charm of the most unpromising books and 
systems. 

Charles Lamb is one of the most admirable of those humorists 
who form the peculiar feature of the literature, as the ideas they 
express are the peculiar distinction of the character, of the English 
people. He was born in 1775, and died in 1835; and forms a 
iDright light in that intellectual galaxy of which Wordsworth is the 
centre. He was essentially a Londoner : London life supplied him 
with his richest materials ; and yet his mind was so imbued, so satu- 
rated with our older writers, that he is original by the mere force of 
self-tranformation into the spirit of the elder literature : he was, in 
short, an old writer, who lived by accident a century or two after his 
real time. Wordsworth is peculiarly the poet of solitary rural nature; 
Lamb drew an inspiration as true, as delicate, as profound, from the 
city life in which he lived ; and from which he never was for a 
moment removed but with pain and a yearning to come back. In 
him the organ of locality/ must have been enormously developed : 
" his household gods planted a terribly fixed foot ; and were not to 
be rooted up without blood. During the early and greater part of 
his life, Lamb, poor and unfriended, was drudging as a clerk in the 
India House ; and it was not till late in life that he was unchained 
from the desk. Yet in this, the most monotonous and unideal of all 
employments, he found means to fill his mind with the finest aroma 
of our older authors ; particularly of the prose writers and drama- 
tists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries : and in his earliest 
compositions, such as the play of ^ John Woodvil,' and the ^Essays 
of Eiia,^ although the world at first perceived a mere imitation of 
their quaintness of expression, there was, in reality, a revival of 
their very spirit. The essays, contributed by him at dififerent times 
to one of the magazines, are the finest things, for humour, taste, 
penetration, and vivacity, which had appeared since the days of 
Montaigne. Where shall we find such intense delicacy of feeling, 
such unimaginable happiness of expression, such a searching into the 
very body of truth, as in these unpretending compositions? A 
chance word, dropped half by accident, a parenthesis, an exclama- 
tion, often lets us into the very mechanism of the sentiment — admits 
us, as it were, behind the scenes. The style has a peculiar and most 



CHAP. XXI.] 



CHARLES LAMB. 



425 



subtle charm • not the result of labour, for it is found in as great 
perfection in his familiar letters — a certain quaintness and antiquitj^, 
not affected in Lamb, but the natural garb of his thoughts. This 
arises partly from the saturation of his mind with the rich and solid 
reading in which he delighted ; and partly, but in a much higher 
degree, from the sensibility of his mind. The manure was abun- 
dant, but the soil was also of a "Sicilian fruitfulness." As in all 
the true humorists, his pleasantry was inseparably allied with the 
finest pathos: the merry quip on the tongue was but the commentary 
on the tear which trembled in the eye. He possessed the power, 
which is seen in Shakspeare's Fools, of conveying a deep philoso- 
phical verity in a jest — of uniting the wildest merriment with the 
truest pathos and the deepest wisdom. It is not only the easy laugh 
of Touchstone in the forest of Arden, but the heart-rending plea- 
santry of Lear's Fool in the storm. The inspiration that other poets 
find in the mountains, in the forest, in the sea. Lamb could draw 
from the crowd of Fleet-street, from the remembrances of an old 
actor, from the benchers of the Temple. In his poems, also, so few 
in number, and so admirable in originality, we have the quintessence 
of familiar sentiment, expressed in the diction of Herbert, Wither, 
and the great dramatists. 

Lamb was the school-fellow, the devoted admirer and friend of 
Coleridge; and perhaps there never was an individual so loved by 
all his contemporaries, by men of every opinion, of every shade of 
literary, political, and religious sentiment, as this truly great wit and 
amiable man. The passionate enemy of everything like cant, com- 
mon-place, or conventionality, his writings derive a singular charm, 
a kind of fresh and wild flavour, from his delight in paradox. The 
man himself was full of paradox : and his punning repartees, deli- 
vered with all the pangs of stuttering, often contained a decisive and 
unanswerable settlement of the question. In his drama of 'John 
Woodvir he endeavoured, though of course unsuccessfully, to revive 
the forms of the Elizabethan drama; and the work might be mis- 
taken for some woodland play of Heywood or Shirley. But it was 
his ' Specimens of the Old English Dramatists ' which showed what 
treasures of the richest poetry lay concealed in the unpublished, and 
in modern times unknown, writers of that wonderful age, whose 
fame has been eclipsed by the glory of some two or three names of 
the same period. In the few lines, often only the few words, of 
criticism in which Lamb sketched the characters of the dramatists 
(with whose writings, from the greatest to the least, from Shakspeare 
down to Broome or Tourneur, no man was ever more familiar), we 
see perpetual examples of the delicacy and penetration of his critical 
faculty. 

Lamb's mind, in its sensitiveness, in its mixture of wit and pathos, 
was eminently Shakspearian ; and his intense and reverent study of 



426 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CHAP. XXI. 



the works of Shakspeare doubtless gave a tendency to this : the glow 
of his humour was too pure and steady not to have been reflected 
from the sun. In his poems, as for instance the ' Farewell to To- 
bacco/ the ' Old Familiar Faces/ and his few but beautiful sonnets, 
we find the very essence and spirit of this quaint tenderness of fancy, 
the naivete of the child mingled with the learning of the scholar : 
they are like "that piece of song" in ^As You Like It/ — "old and 
plain/' 

"And dally with the innocence of love 
Like the old age," 

Among the ^Essays of Elia' are several little narratives, generally 
\isions and parables, inexpressibly simple and beautiful. That named 
^Dream-Children,' and that other ^The Child- Angel' are worthy of 
Jean Paul himself: while the little tale ^Rosamond Gray' is per- 
haps one of the most inimitable gems ever produced in that difficult 
style. 

Leigh Hunt and John Keats are two of the most distinguished 
names among the modern minor poets. The former, however, wrote 
rather under the inspiration of Lord Byron, and the latter under 
that of Shelley. Hunt endeavoured to revive something of the 
freshness, fluency, and vivacity of the old English and old Italian 
poets; while Keats carried to excess the peculiar manner of his 
model. Both wrote "upon a system/' as Byron remarked upon the 
former ; and, therefore, both of them will descend to posterity with 
an imperfect and unsatisfactory reputation. Hunt's best production, 
of any length, is the poem entitled ^A Story of Bimini/ an expan- 
sion, into a pretty narrative, of the tale of ' Francesca da Rimini' 
condensed by Dante, with such intensity of pathos, into a few lines 
of his ' Inferno.' This work, which is written in the rhymed couplet 
founded upon Dryden's admirable modernizations of Chaucer and 
the old Italian novelists, is full of a delicate and refined fancy : but 
the diction is often deformed by a peculiar and intolerable coxcombry 
of language, to which has been given the significant appellation of 
cockneyism. It is a mixture of the concetti of second-rate Italian 
poetry with the smug arcadianism of a London citizen masquerading 
as a shepherd. Hunt, like his friend and contemporary Hazlitt, has 
done good service to his country as a miscellaneous critic and essayist 
on various detached portions of our literature, particularly that of 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; and in the ' Indicator ' of 
the former there is much agreeable chat on literature and art ; sel- 
dom very profound perhaps, but always sparkling with a singular 
effervescence of animal spirits, and filled (the greatest charm in 
writing of this nature) with a sincere and lively admiration for the 
beauties under examination. The more ambitious tone of Hazlitt's 
writings, and the more scientific exposition and investigation of 
aesthetic principles, may seem to claim for him a place rather nearer 



CHAP. XXI.] 



KEATS. 



427 



to tbat occupied by Coleridge : but we are not sure tbat Hunt's easy, 
pleasant, good-humoured chat has not done more than Hazlitt's 
graver tone to disseminate a taste for rich and healthy literature. 

Keats, whose short life was embittered by the contemptuous 
reception his first poems met with from the critics, was bom in 1796, 
and died at the age of 24. What is most remarkable in his works 
is the wonderful profusion of figurative language, often exquisitely 
beautiful and luxuriant, but sometimes purely fantastical and far- 
fetched. The peculiarity of Shelley's style, to which we gave the 
name of incatenation, Keats carries to extravagance — one word, one 
image, one rhyme suggests another, till we quite lose sight of the 
original idea ; which is smothered in its own sweet luxuriance, like a bee 
stifled in honey. Shakspeare and his school, upon whose manner 
Keats undoubtedly endeavoured to form his way of writing, have, it 
is true, this pecuUarity of language : but in them the images never 
run away with the thought ] the guiding master-idea is ever present. 
These poets never throw the reins on the mane of their Pegasus, 
even when soaring to " the brightest heaven of invention." With 
them, the images are produced by a force acting ab intra ; like wild 
flowers springing from the very richness of the ground. In Keats 
the force acts ob extra ; the flowers are forcibly fixed in the earth, 
as in the garden of a child, who cannot wait till they grow there of 
themselves. Keats deserves high praise for one very peculiar and 
original merit : he has treated the classical mythology in a way 
absolutely new ; representing the pagan deities not as mere abstrac- 
tions of art, nor as mere creatures of popular belief; but giving 
them passions and affections like our own, highly purified and 
idealised, however, and in exquisite accordance with the lovely 
scenery of ancient G-reece and Italy, and with the golden atmosphere 
of primeval existence. This treatment of a subject, which ordinary 
readers would consider hopelessly outworn and threadbare, is certainly 
not Homeric ; nor is it Bliltonic ; nor is it in the manner of any of 
the great poets who have employed the mythologic imagery of anti- 
quity : but it is productive of very exquisite pleasure ; and must, 
therefore, be in accordance with true principles of art. In ^ Hyperion,' 
in the ' Ode to Pan,' in the verses on a ' Grrecian Urn,' we find a 
noble and airy strain of beautiful classic imagery, combined with a 
perception of natural loveliness so luxuriant, so rich, so delicate, that 
the rosy dawn of Grreek poetry seems combined with all that is most 
tenderly pensive in the calm sunset twilight of romance. Such of 
Keats 's poems as are founded on more modern subjects — ' The Eve 
of St. Agnes,' for example, or 'The Pot of Basil,' a beautiful 
anecdote versified from Boccaccio — are to our taste inferior to those 
of his productions in which the scenery and personages are mythologic. 
It would seem as if the severity of ancient art, which in the last- 
menti9ned works acted as an involuntary check upon a too luxuriant 



428 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [CIIAP. XXI. 



fancy, deserted him when he left the antique world ; and the absence 
of true, deep, intense passion (his prevailing defect) becomes neces- 
sarily more painfully apparent ; as well as the discordant mingling 
of the prettinesses of modern poetry with the directness, and the 
unaffected simplicity, of Chaucer and Boccaccio. 

Depth and intensity of feeling, which we have denied to Keats, 
form the great secret of the power of Thomas Hood ; an author long 
known chiefly as an admirable punster, and a writer of the most 
broadly comic character; but whose reputation, as an admirable poet 
and profound humourist, is growing day by day. For several years 
he published a volume called ' The Comic Annual,^ a species of 
burlesque upon the gift-books then so popular in England; and the 
droll prose and verse, illustrated by still droller woodcuts executed by 
himself, supplied Christmas parties with a never-failing annuity of 
laughter. He also produced, principally as contributions to ' The 
New Monthly Magazine,' of which he was for some time editor, a 
large number of tales, generally turning upon some minute but 
grotesque incident, and treated in a manner so perfectly original, 
that Hood must absolutely be considered as constituting an era in 
the history of comic literature. Like Lamb, he was a consummate 
punster ; and, like Lamb's, his puns and wildest friskings of humour 
not only excite a momentary laugh, but frequently contain an inner 
and esoteric sense, often wonderfully beautiful and profound. Like 
Lamb, too, Hood possessed a sort of intuitive perception of truth 
and beauty: and, like him, his heart was warm and his sympathy 
boundless. In the little prose tales, where he talks to his reader in 
a strain at once wonderfully imaginative, profound, and ludicrous — 
in his admirable imaginary correspondences, generally between 
servants, or peasants, who distort the English language so as to pro- 
duce truly Rabelassian double and triple meanings — in his comic 
poems, as the story of Miss Kielmansegg — ^in his graver letters on 
the rights of the literary profession, and on the condition of the 
poor, he shows an inexhaustible richness of invention, a power over 
words and combinations, which never fails not only to gratify our 
curiosity and sense of the ludicrous, but even to supply us with 
ideas new, tender, and sometimes sublime. But Hood is also a 
great original poet of a serious and romantic cast. His ^ Dream of 
Eugene Aram,' his 'Elm Tree,' are works of powerful conception, 
and permanent interest; his 'Plea of the Midsummer Fairies,' his 
'Two Swans,' and ' Lycus the Centaur,' are exquisite pieces of airy 
and fantastic imagery, nothing inferior to Keats's happiest produc- 
tions; while he must be considered as the originator of a very 
peculiar and powerful species of songs, equally admirable for the 
force and simplicity of their diction, the harmony and novelty of 
their metrical construction, and above all for the fervid and vigorous 
spirit of humanity which they breathe. The beautiful stanzas called 



CHAP. XXI.] 



CONCLUSION. 



429 



'The Bridge of Sighs/ and the painfully touching ^ Song of the 
Shirt,' were the means of exciting for an unhappy and neglected 
class of his countrywomen the pity, the interest, and even the active 
benevolence of the nation. Such things are not only good works, 
but good actions ; and the triumph of having made genius a minister 
to philanthropy is a glory worthy of the friend of Lamb and the 
first humorous writer of his age. 

It now remains to pass rapidly over a few names of contemporary 
writers ', less remarkable, in general, for originality of genius than 
for elegance of taste, happy selection of subject, or novelty of treat- 
ment. In the department of poetry women have shown as great an 
activity as in most other fields of modern literature. The rich and 
fervid tone of Mrs. Hemans would deserve a more detailed mention 
than our space will aff"ord; and Mrs. Norton, L. E. L., and other 
ladies have shown no mean mastery over the tenderer moods of the 
modern lyre. Of the distinguished but less important 7nen — our 
Dii minorum gentium — ifc will suf&ce to specify Mr. Barham, who 
has written, under the pseudonym of Thomas Ingoldsby, a series of 
comic tales in easy verse ; — wild and wondrous legends of chivalry, 
witchcraft, and diablerie, related in singularly rich and flexible 
metre ; and in language in which the intermixture of the modern 
cant phrase of society with antiquarian pedantry produces a truly 
comic effect. Tennyson, Alford, and Milnes may be considered as 
the poetical disciples of Wordsworth. Thomas Babington Macaulay, 
celebrated as a brilliant critic and essayist in ' The Edinburgh Review/ 
having been struck with Niebuhr's theory, that the early history of 
Rome was compiled by Livy and other historians from popular 
metrical legends since lost, conceived the bold and happy idea of 
reconstructing some of these vanished ballads in rough picturesque 
plebeian metre ] and producing in English some such fierce republican 
lays as might have been sung by the peasant heroes of ancient Rome. 
He has executed in this manner the stories of '■ Horatius Codes,' 
* The Battle of Lake Regilius,' ' The Death of Virginia,' with a fire 
and animation which eclipsed even his own powerful ballads on events 
in the History of France ; and has shown himself to be not merely 
a master of all the strength and muscular power of our early 
language, but also intimately penetrated by the spirit of antiquity 
and the rugged independence of old Rome. 

In thus investigating, however cursorily, the course of English 
literature from its remote origin in Chaucer — himself an emblem of 
the confluence, so to say, of three different streams of art and 
nationality — the original Saxonism, the Italian spirit of the Renais- 
sance, and the free spirit of the Reformation — no one can fiiil to be 
struck with one singular and noble peculiarity ; — a peculiarity which 
it has in common with the nationality it reflects; and one which, 
though perceptible in the character of every branch of the Teutonic 



430 



OUTLINES OP GENERAL LITERATURE. [CIIAP. XXI. 



race, was never possessed so completely as by the English nation. 
We mean that intense and ever-present sap and vitality, which 
allowed no interval to interfere between the most gigantic and 
dissimilar exertions of creative energy. No sooner does any class 
of composition, any school of literature, decline from its period of 
highest fertility, than another springs up, as rich, as living, and as 
energetic as the former. The English intellect, thanks to the happy 
freedom of our institutions, and the strong virility of the national 
character, has no dull, dead, periods of feeble imitation and languid 
servility. The moment it has duly developed itself in one direction, 
it instantly takes and steadily maintains another : and our literature 
— essentially the literature of a nation of men — rich in the finest 
and most unequalled models of every kind and class of excellence 
— is in every sense worthy of the greatest, freest, and most thought- 
ful people that the world has ever seen. So glorious a past can 
promise nothing but a future as illustrious. The same powers 
and influences which have enabled England to produce more and 
greater things than any other community can boast, are still at work ; 
and will enable her to produce others, diiferent in kind perhaps, but 
as durable, as splendid, as sublime. 



• 



A SKETCH 

OF 

AMERICAN LITEEATURE. 



36 



(431) 



A SKETCH 

OF 

AMEEICAN LITERATURE. 



CHAPTEE I. 

Literature in the Colonies imitative — Relation of American to English Litera- 
-ture — Gradual Advancement of the United States in Letters — Their first 
Development theological — Writers in this Department — Jonathan Edwards 
— Religious Controversy — William E. Channtng — Writings of the Clergy — 
Newspapers and School Books — Domestic Literature — Female Writers — 
Oratory — Revolutionary Eloquence — American Orators — Alexander Hamil- 
ton — Daniel Webster and others — Edward Everett — American History and 
Historians — Jared Sparks — David Ramsay — George Bancroft — Hildreth — 
Elliot Lossing — William H. Prescott — Irving — Wheaton — Cooper — Park- 
man. 

Literature is a positive element of civilized life ; but in differ- 
ent countries and epochs it exists sometimes as a passive taste or 
means of culture, and at others as a development of productive ten- 
dencies. The &st is the usual form in colonial societies, where the 
habit of looking to the fatherland for intellectual nutriment as well 
as political authority is the natural result even of patriotic feeling. 
The circumstances, too, of young communities, like those of the in- 
dividual, are unfavourable to original literary production. Life is 
too absorbing to be recorded otherwise than in statistics. The wants 
of the hour and the exigencies of practical responsibility wholly 
engage the mind. Half a century ago, it was usual to sneer in 
England at the literary pretensions of America; but the ridicule 
was quite as unphilosophical as unjust, for it was to be expected 
that the new settlements would find their chief mental subsistence 
in the rich heritage of British literature, endeared to them by a 
community of language, political sentiment, and historical asso- 
ciation. And when a few of the busy denizens of a new republic 
ventured to give expression to their thoughts, it was equally natural 
that the spirit and the principles of their ancestral literature should 
reappear. Scenery, border-life, the vicinity of the aborigines, and a 
great political experiment were the only novel features in the new 

(133) 



434 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATUBE. [CHAP. I. 



world upon wliich to found anticipations of originality ; in academic 
culture, habitual reading, moral and domestic tastes, and cast of 
mind, the Americans were identified with the mother country ; and 
in all essential particulars, would naturally follow the style thus in- 
herent in their natures and confirmed by habit and study. At first, 
therefore, the literary development of the United States was imita- 
tive ; but with the progress of the country, and her increased leisure 
and means of education, the writings of .the people became more and 
more characteristic; theological and political occasions gradually 
ceased to be the exclusive moulds of thought; and didactic, ro- 
mantic, and picturesque compositions appeared from time to time. 
Irving peopled ' Sleepy Hollow^ with fanciful creations ; Bryant de- 
scribed not only with truth and grace, but with devotional sentiment, 
the characteristic scenes of his native land ; Cooper introduced Euro- 
peans to the wonders of her forest and sea-coast; Bancroft made her 
story eloquent ; and Webster proved that the race of orators who 
once roused her children to freedom, was not extinct. The names of 
Edwards and Franklin were echoed abroad; the bonds of mental 
dependence were gradually loosened — the inherited tastes remained, 
but they were freshened with a more native zest, — and although 
Brockden Brown is still compared to Grodwin, Irving to Addison, 
Cooper to Scott, HoiFman to Moore, Emerson to Carlyle, and Holmes 
to Pope, a characteristic vein, an individuality of thought, and a local 
significance is now generally recognised in the emanations of the 
American mind ; and the best of them rank favourably and harmo- 
niously with similar examplars in British literature ; while, in a few 
instances, the nationality is so marked, and so sanctioned by true 
genius as to challenge the recognition of all impartial and able critics. 
The majority, however, of our authors are men of talent rather than 
of genius ; the greater part of the literature of the country has sprung 
from New England, and is therefore, as a general rule, too unimpas- 
sioned and coldly elegant for popular effect. There has been a 
lamentable want of self-reliance, and an obstinate blindness to the 
worth of native material, both scenic, historical, and social. The 
great defect of our literature has been a lack of independence, and 
too exclusive a deference to hackneyed models ; there has been and 
is no deficiency of intellectual life; it has thus far, however, often 
proved too diffusive and conventional for great results. 

The intellect of the country first developed in a theological form. 
This was a natural consequence of emigration, induced by difiference 
of religious opinion, the free scope which the new colonies afforded 
for discussion, and the variety of creeds represented by the different 
races who thus met on a common soil, including every diversity of 
sentiment, from Puritanism to Episcopacy, each extreme modified by 
shades of doctrine and individual speculation. The clergy, also, were 
the best educated and most influential class; in political and social 



CHAP. I.] A SKETCH OP AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



485 



as well as religious aiFairs, their voice had a controlling power ; and, 
for a considerable period, they alone enjoyed that frequent immunity 
from physical labor which is requisite to mental productiveness. The 
colonial era, therefore, boasted only a theological literature, for the 
most part fugitive and controversial ; yet sometimes taking a more 
permanent shape, as in the Biblical Concordance of Newman, and some 
of the writings of Roger Williams, Increase and Cotton Mather, May- 
hew, Cooper, Stiles, D wight, Elliot, Johnson, Chauncey, Witherspoon, 
and Plopkins. There is no want of learning or reasoning power in 
many of the tracts of those once formidable disputants ; and such read- 
ing accorded with the stern tastes of our ancestors ; but, as a general 
rule, the specimens which yet remain in print, are now only referred to 
by the curious student of divinity or the antiquarian. One enduring 
relic, however, of this epoch survives, and is held in great estimation 
by metaphysicians for its subtlety of argument, its originality and 
vigor, and masterly treatment of a profound subject. I allude to the 
celebrated Treatise on the Will, by Dr. Edwards, a work originally 
undertaken to furnish a philosophical basis for the Calvinistic dogmas; 
and, in its sagacious hardihood of thought, forming a characteristic 
introduction to the literary history of New England. 

Jonathan Edwards was the only son of a Connecticut minister 
of good acquirements and sincere piety. He was born in 1708 in 
the town of Windsor ; he entered Yale College at the age of thirteen, 
and at nineteen became a settled preacher in New York. In 1728, 
he was elected a tutor in the college at New Haven ; and after dis- 
charging its duties with eminent success for two years, he became the 
colleague of his grandfather, in the ministry, at the beautiful vil- 
lage of Northampton, in Massachusetts. Relieved from all material 
cares by the affection of his wife, his time was entirely given to pro- 
fessional occupations and study. An ancient elm is yet designated 
in the town where he passed so many years, in the crotch of which 
was his favorite seat, where he was accustomed to read and think 
for hours together. His sermons began to attract attention, and 
several were republished in England. As a writer, he first gained 
celebrity by a treatise on 'Original Sin.' He was inaugurated Pre- 
sident of Princeton College, N. J., on the 16th of February 1785; 
and on the 22d of the ensuing March died of small-pox, which then 
ravaged the vicinity. 

" This remarkable man," says Sir James Mackintosh, the meta- 
physician of America, was formed among the Calvinists of New 
England, when their stern doctrine retained its vigorous authority. 
His power of subtle argument, perhaps unmatched, certainly unsur- 
passed among men, was joined, as in some of the ancient mystics, 
with a character which raised his piety to fervor. He embraced 
their doctrine, probably without knowing it to be theirs. Had he 
suffered this noble principle to take the right road to all its fair con- 
36* 



436 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. I. 



sequences, lie would have entirely concurred with Plato, with Shaftes- 
bury and Malebranche, in devotion to the first good, first perfect, 
and first fair/ But he thought it necessary afterwards to limit his 
doctrine to his own persuasion, by denying that such moral excellence 
could be discovered in divine things by those Christians who did not 
take the same view with him of their religion/^* 

Although so meagre a result, as far as regards permanent litera- 
ture, sprang from the early theological writings in America, they had 
a certain strength and earnestness which tended to invigorate and 
exercise the minds of the people; sometimes, indeed, conducive to 
bigotry, but often inciting reflective habits. The mental life of the 
colonists seemed, for a long time, identical with religious discussion ; 
and the names of Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams, George Fox, 
Whitfield, the early field-preacher, and subsequently those of Dr. 
Hopkins, and Murray the father of Universalisra in America, were 
rallying words for logical warfare ; the struggle between the advo- 
cates of quakerism, baptism by inimersion, and other of the minority 
against those of the old Presbyterian and Church of England doc- 
trine, gave birth to a multitude of tracts, sermons, and oral debates 
which elicited no little acumen, rhetoric, and learning. The origi- 
nality and productiveness of the American mind in this department 
has, indeed, always been a characteristic feature in its development. 
Scholars and orators of distinguished ability have never been wanting 
to the clerical profession among us ; and every sect in the land has 
its illustrious interpreters, who have bequeathed, or still contribute, 
written memorials of their ability. Davies, i3ellamy, Kobinson, 
Stuart, Tappan, Williams, Bishop White, Dr. Jarvis, Dr. Hawkes, 
Hooker, Cheever, and others, have materially adorned the literature 
of the church ; the diversity of sects is one of the most curious and 
striking facts in our social history, and is fully illustrated by the lite- 
rary organs of each denomination, from the spiritual commentaries 
of Bush to the ardent Catholicism of Brownson.'l' About the com- 
mencement of the present century, a memorable conflict took place 
between the liberal and orthodox party ; and among the writings of 
the former may be found more finished specimens of composition than 
had previously appeared on ethics and religion. Independent of their 
opinions, the high morality and beautiful sentiment, as well as chaste 
and graceful diction, of the leaders of that school, gave a literary 
value and interest to pulpit eloquence which soon exercised a marked 



* Progress of Ethical Philosophy. 

t The clergy have been among the prominent laborers in the field of useful 
literature. The names of Dehon, Paj'son, Potter, Abbott, Bedell, Knox, Todd, 
Woods, Sprague, Baird, Barnes, Alexander, Tyng, Bacon, Stewart, of the 
Orthodox and the Episcopal denomination ; and of Buckminster, William and 
Henry Ware, Dewey, V/hitman, Osgood, Greenwood, Frothingham, Brooks, 
Furness, Peabody, Stetson, and many others of the Unitarian, are identified 
with current educational and religious literature. 



CHAP. I.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



437 



influence on the literary taste of tlie community. Religious and 
moral writings now derived from style a new interest. At the head 
of this class, who achieved a world-wide reputation for genius in 
ethical literature, is William Ellery Channing. 

" Half a century ago, there might have been seen threading the 
streets of Richmond, a diminutive figure, with a pale attenuated 
face, eyes of spiritual brightness, an expansive and calm brow, and 
movements of nervous alacrity. An abstraction of manner and in- 
tentness of expression denoted the scholar, while the scrupulously 
neat, yet worn attire, as clearly evidenced restricted means and habits 
of self-denial. The youth was one of those children of New Eng- 
land braced by her discipline, and early sent forth to earn a position 
in the world, by force of character and activity of intellect. He was 
baptized into the fraternity of Nature by the grandeur and beauty 
of the sea as it breaks along the craggy shore of Rhode Island ; the 
domestic influences of a Puritan household had initiated him into the 
morai convictions ; and the teachin'gs of Harvard yielded him the 
requisite attainments to discharge the ofl&ce of private tutor in a 
wealthy Virginian family. Then and there, far from the companions 
of his studies and the home of his childhood, through secret conflicts, 
devoted application to books, and meditation, amid privations, com- 
parative isolation, and premature responsibility, he resolved to conse- 
crate himself to the Christian ministry. Illness had subdued his 
elasticity, care shadowed his dreams, and retirement solemnized his 
desires. Thence he went to Boston, and for more than forty years 
pursued the consistent tenor of his way as an eloquent divine and 
powerful writer, achieving a wide renown, bequeathing a venerated 
memory, and a series of discourses, reviews and essays, which, with 
remarkable perspicuity and earnestness, vindicate the cause of free- 
dom, the original endowments and eternal destiny of human nature, 
the sanctions of religion and ^the ways of God to man.' Sectarian 
controversy, the duties of the pastoral ofl&ce, journeys abroad and at 
home, intercourse with superior minds and the seclusion made neces- 
sary by disease, — the quiet of home, the refining influence of lite- 
rary taste, and the vocations of citizen, father and philanthropist, 
occupied those intervening years. He died, one beautiful October 
evening, at Bennington, Vermont, while on a summer excursion, and 
was buried at Mount Auburn. A monument commemorates the 
gratitude of his parishioners and the exalted estimation he had 
acquired in the world. A biography prepared by his nephew, re- 
counts the few incidents of his career, and gracefully unfolds the 
process of his growth and mental history. 

" It is seldom that ethical writings interest the multitude. The 
abstract nature of the topics they discuss, and the formal style in 
which they are usually embodied, are equally destitute of that popular 
charm that wins the common heart. A remarkable exception is 



438 A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [OHAP. I. 

presented in tlie literary remains of Channing. The simple yet 
comprehensive ideas upon which he dwells, the tranquil gravity of 
his utterance, and the winning clearness of his style, render many 
of his productions universally attractive as examples of quiet and 
persuasive eloquence. And this result is entirely independent of any 
sympathy with his theological opinions, or experience of his pulpit 
oratory. Indeed, the genuine interest of Dr. Channing's writings is 
ethical. As the champion of a sect, his labours have but a temporary 
value ; as the exponent of a doctrinal system, he will not long be re- 
membered with gratitude, because the world is daily better appre- 
ciating the religious sentiment as of infinitely more value than any 
dogma ; but as a moral essayist, some of the more finished writings 
of Channing will have a permanent hold upon reflective and tasteful 
minds. His nephew has compiled his biography with singular judg- 
ment. He has followed the method of Lockhart in the Life of Scott. 
As far as possible, the narrative is woven from letters and diaries, — 
the subject speaks for himself, and only such intermediate ol:)perva- 
tions of the editor are given as are necessary to form a connected 
whole. Uneventful as these memoirs are, they are interesting as 
revelations of the process of culture, the means and purposes of one 
whose words have winged their way, bearing emphatic messages, over 
both hemispheres, — who, for many years, successfully advocated im- 
portant truths ; and whose memory is one of the most honored of 
jN'ew England's gifted divines. 

To Dr. Channing's style is, in a great degree, ascribable the po- 
pularity of his writings; and we are struck with its remarkable 
identity from the earliest to the latest period of his career. A peti- 
tion to Congress, penned while a student at the University, which 
appears in these volumes, has all its prominent characteristics — its 
brief sentences, occasionally lengthened where the idea requires it — 
its emphasis, its simplicity, directness, and transparent diction. This 
is a curious evidence of the purely meditative existence he must have 
passed; for it is by attrition with other minds and subjection to varied 
influences, that the style of writing as well as the tone of manners 
undergoes those striking modifications which we perceive in men less 
intent upon a few thoughts. His character is, therefore, justly de- 
scribed as more indebted to ' the influences of solitary thought than 
of companionship.' Such is the process by which all truth becomes 
clearly impressed and richly developed to consciousness ; on the same 
principle that, according to Mary Wollstonecraft, reflection is neces- 
sary to the realization even of a great passion. ' I derive my senti- 
ments from the nature of man,' says one of Channing's letters. 
Perhaps it would have been more strictly true if he had said one 
man J for an inference we long ago derived from his writings, we find 
amply confirmed in his memoirs — that he was a very inadequate 
observer. Some of his attempts to portray character are as complete 



CHAP. I.] 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



439 



fancy sketches as we erer perused. They show an utter blindness to 
the real traits even of familiar persons. Beautiful in themselves, it 
is usually from the graceful drapery of his imagination that the 
charm is derived. Indeed, Dr. Channing hardly came near enough 
to see the features in their literal significance. He drew almost ex- 
clusively from within. His subjects were what the lay-figure is to 
the artist — frames for his thoughts to deck with efi'ective costume. 
When he reasoned of a truth or an idea, he was more at home ; for 
in the abstract he was at liberty to expatiate, without keeping in view 
the actual relations of things — the stern facts and bare realities of 
life aad character. Indeed, nothing can be more delightful to a re- 
fined and thoughtful mind, than to follow Channing in his exposition 
of a striking idea or truth — so clearly and dispassionately stated, then 
gradually unfolded to its ultimate significance, with, here and there, 
a striking illustration; and then wound up, like a fine strain of 
music, which seems to raise us more and more into light and tran- 
quillity on invisible pinions !" 

Of all the foreign commentators on our political institutions and 
national character, De Tocqueville is the most distinguished for phi- 
losophical insight; and although many of his speculations are vision- 
ary, not a few are pregnant with reflective wisdom. He says in 
regard to the literary development of such a republic as our own, 
that its early fruits " will bear marks of an untutored and rude vigor 
of thought, frequently of great variety and singular fecundity.^' 
What may be termed the casual writing and speaking of the country, 
confirms this prophecy. The two most prolific branches of literature 
in America, are journalism and educational works. The aim in both 
is to supply that immediate demand which, according to the French 
philosopher, is more imperative and prevailing than in monarchial 
lands. Newspapers and school-books are, therefore, the characteristic 
form of literature in the United States. The greatest scholars of the 
country have not deemed the production of the latter an unworthy 
labor, nor the most active, enterprising, and ambitious failed to ex- 
ercise their best powers in theformer sphere. An intelligent foreigner, 
therefore, who observed the predominance of these two departments, 
would arrive at the just conclusion, that the great mental distinction 
of the nation is two-fold — the universality of education and a general, 
though superficial intellectual activity in the mass of the people. There 
is, however, still another phase of our literary condition equally signi- 
ficant — and that is the popularity of what may be termed domestic 
reading : a species of books intended for the family, and designed to 
teach science, religion, morality, the love of nature, and other desirable 
acquisitions. These works range from a juvenile to a mature scope 
and interest, both in form and spirit ; but are equally free of all ex- 



* Characteristics of Literature. First Series. 



440 



A SKETCH OP AMEHICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. I. 



travagance — except it be purely imaginative — and are unexception- 
able, often elevated, in moral tone. They constitute the literature of 
the fireside, and give to the young their primary ideas of the world 
and of life. Hence their moral importance can scarcely be overrated. 
Accordingly, children's books have not been thought unworthy the 
care of the best minds : philosophers like Guizot, poets like Hans 
Andersen, popular novelists like Scott and Dickens, have not scorned 
this apparently humble but most iniluential service. . The reform in 
books for the young was commenced in England by Maria Edgeworth 
and Mrs. Barbauld; when the ' Parent's Assistant,' and ^ Original 
Poems for Infant Minds/ superseded ^ Mother Groose' and ^ Jack the 
Griant-Killer ;' and with the instinct of domestic utility, so prevalent 
on this side of the water, this impulse was caught up and prolonged 
here, and resulted in a class of books and writers, not marked by high 
genius or striking originality, yet honorable to the good sense and 
moral feeling of the country. These have supplied the countless 
homes scattered over the western continent, with innocent, instruc- 
tive, and often refined reading, sometimes instinct not only with a 
domestic but a national spirit ; often abounding with the most fresh 
and true pictures of scenery, customs, and local traits, and usually con- 
ceived in a tone of gentleness and purity fitted to chasten and im- 
prove the taste. These writers have usually adapted themselves 
equally to the youngest and to the most advanced of the family 
circle — extended their labor of love from the child's story-book to 
the domestic novel.* 

Oratory is eminently the literature of republics. Political freedom 
gives both occasion and impulse to thought on public interests ; and 
its expression is a requisite accomplishment to every intelligent and 
patriotic citizen. American eloquence, although not unknown in the 
professional spheres of colonial life, developed with, originality and 
richness at the epoch of the revolution. Indeed, the questions that 
agitated the country naturally induced popular discussions, and as a 
sense of wrong and a resolve to maintain the rights of freemen, took 
the place of remonstrance and argument, a race of orators seems to 
have sprung to life, whose chief traits continue evident in a long and 
illustrious roll of names, identified with our statesmen, legislators and 

* It is creditable to the sex that this sphere has been filled, in our country, 
chiefly by female writers; the list of whom includes a long array of endeared 
and honoured names, at the head of which stands Hannah Adams, with her 
once popular histories, Catharine M. Sedgwick, with her moral and graphic 
illustrations of New England life, and Lydia M. Child, with her poetic and 
generous suggestiveness. Among others may be mentioned Mrs. Lydia H. 
Sigourney, Miss Leslie, sister of the artist, Eliza Robbins, Mrs. Oilman, of 
Charleston, S. C, Mrs. Lee, of Boston, Mrs. E. Oakes Smith, Miss Beecher, 
Mrs. Kirkland, Mrs. Ellett, Mrs. S. .T. Hale, and such noms de plume as 
Fanny Forrester and Grace Greenwood; also Mrs. Embury, of Brooklyn, L. 
I., Miss Mcintosh, Mrs. Neal, Alice Carey, Mrs. Farrar, Mrs. Willard, Mrs. 
Hall, and Miss Wetherell. 



CHAP. I.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



441 



divines. From the stripling Hamilton, who, in July 1774, held a 
vast concourse in breathless excitement, in the fields near New York, 
while he demonstrated the right and necessity of resistance to British 
oppression, to the mature Webster, who, in December 1829, defended 
the union of the States with an argumentative and rhetorical power 
ever memorable in the annals of legislation, there has been a series 
of remarkable public speakers who have nobly illustrated this branch 
of literature in the United States. The fame of American eloquence 
is in part traditionary. Warren, Adams, and Otis in Boston, and 
Patrick Henry in Virginia, by their spirit-stirring appeals, roused the 
land to the assertion and defence of its just rights; and Alexander 
Hamilton, Governeur Morris, Pinkney, Jay, Butledge, and other firm 
and gifted men g.ave wise and effective direction to the power thus 
evoked, by their logical and earnest appeals. 

" At the time the contest began,'^ says Guizot, " there were in each 
colony some men already honored by their fellow-citizens, already well 
known in the defence of public liberty, influential by their property, 
talent, or character; faithful to ancient virtues,'yet friendly to modern 
improvement; sensible to the splendid advantages of civilization, and 
yet attached to simplicity of manners ; high-toned in their feelings, 
but of modest minds, at the same time ambitious and prudent in their 
patriotic impulses." Foremost among these remarkable men was 
Alexander Hamilton ; by birth a West Indian, by descent uniting 
the Scottish vigor and sagacity of character with the accomplishment 
of the French. While a collegian in New York, his talents, at once 
versatile and brilliant, were apparent in the insight and poetry of his 
debates, the solemn beauty of his devotion, the serious argument of 
his ambitious labors,- and the readiness of his humorous sallies ; with 
genuine religious sentiment, born perhaps of his Huguenot blood, he 
united a zest for pleasure, a mercurial temperament, and grave aspi- 
rations. In his first youth the gentleman, the pietist, the hero, and 
the statesman alternately exhibited, sometimes dazzled, at others im- 
pressed, and always won the hearts of his comrades. His first public 
demonstration was as an orator, when but seventeen ; and notwith- 
standing his slender figure and extreme youth, he took captive both 
the reason and feeling of a popular assembly. Shortly after he be- 
came involved in the controversy then raging between whigs and 
tories; and his pamphlets and newspaper essays were read with 
mingled admiration and incredulity at the rare powers of expression 
and mature judgment thus displayed by the juvenile antagonist of 
bishops and statesmen. Bat his arm not less than his tongue was 
dedicated to the cause he thus espoused with equal ardor and intelli- 
gence. He studied the military art, gained Washington's notice in 
the retreat of the American forces through New Jersey; and from 
that moment became his intimate coadjutor. His next intellectual 
labor was devoted to explaining and enforcing the principles of finance 



442 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. I. 



— a subject of which his countrymen were practically ignorant. To 
his zeal and sagacity in this department, combined with the noble 
efforts of Kobert Morris, the country was indebted for the pecuniary 
means of carrying on the war of the revolution, and finally for a xe- 
gulated currency and established credit. 

As first secretary of the treasury, Hamilton may be said to have 
laid the foundation of our national prosperity. His mind, even at a 
period most burdened with ofiicial cares, was given to the successful 
advocacy of a neutral course in regard to France ; after honorable 
service attaining the rank of lieutenant-general, when the army dis- 
banded, Hamilton resumed the legal profession. The idol of the 
Federal party, and a candidate for the Chief Magistracy, he became 
entangled in a duel planned by political animosity, and fell at Wee- 
hawken, opposite the city of New York, by the hand of Aaron Burr, 
on the eleventh of June, 1804. The impression caused by his 
untimely death was unprecedented in this country; for no public 
man ever stood forth so clear in his great ofiice," more essentially 
useful in affairs, courageous in battle, loyal in attachment, gifted in 
mind, or graceful in manner. During a life of such varied and ab- 
sorbing occupation, he found time to put on record his principles as 
a statesman ; not always highly finished, his writings are full of 
sense and energy ; their tone is noble, their insight often deep, and 
the wisdom they display remarkable. His letters are finely charac- 
teristic ; his state-papers valuable, and the ^ Federalist ' a significant 
illustration both of his genius and the age.* 

The historical and literary anniversaries of such frequent occurrence 
in this country, and the exigencies of political life, give occasion for 
the exercise of oratory to educated citizens of all professions — from 
the statesman who fills the gaze of the world, to the village pastor 
and country advocatp. Accordingly a large and, on the whole, 
remarkably creditable body of discourses, emanating from the best 
minds of the country, have been published in collected editions, to 
such an extent as to constitute a decided feature of American litera- 
ture. They are characteristic also as indicating the popular shape 
into which intellectual labors naturally run in a young and free 
country, and the fugitive and occasional literary efforts which alone 
are practicable for the majority even of scholars. The most solid 

* No small part of the political writing of the United States is fugitive in 
its character ; but the State papers, including the correspondence of the chief 
actors in the revolutionary war, and the adoption of the Constitution, form a 
mine of political ideas and principles. After these, the speeches of the leading 
statesmen contain, in themselves, a history of the political opinions and crises 
of the nation ; and an armory of logical weapons, of more or less value, may 
easily be drawn from the works of Franklin, Hamilton, Morris, Jay, Quincy, 
Dickinson, Paine, Jefferson, Madison, Livingston, Ames, Freneau, Noah 
Webster, Rawle, William Sullivan, Leggett, and other political essayists. 
The 'Federalist,' the joint production of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, is a 
standard book of this class. 



CHAP. I.] A SKETCH OE AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



443 



of this class of writings are the productions of statesmen ; and of 
these, three are conspicuous, although singularly diverse both in style 
and cast of thought — Webster, Calhoun, and Clay. The former's 
oration at Plymouth in 1820; his address at the laying of the corner- 
stone of the Bunker Hill Monument, half a century after the battle; 
his discourse on the deaths of Adams and Jefferson, the following 
year; and his reply to Hayne, in the U. S. Senate, in 1829, are 
memorable specimens of oratory, and recognised everywhere as 
among the greatest instances of genius in this branch of letters in 
modern times. These are, however, but a very sm.ail part of his 
speeches and forensic arguments, which constitute a permanent and 
characteristic, as well as intrinsically valuable and interesting portion 
of our native literature. 

Daniel Webster is the son of a New Hampshire farmer. Pie was 
born in 1782, graduated at Dartmouth College, and began the prac- 
tice of law at a village near Salisbury, his birth-place, but removed 
to Portsmouth in 1807. He soon distinguished himself at the bar, 
and as a member of the House of Representatives; retired from 
Congress and removed to Boston in 1817; and, by his able argu- 
ments in the Supreme Court, as well as his unrivalled eloquence on 
special occasions, was very soon acknowledged to be one of the great- 
est men America had produced. His career as a senator, a foreign 
minister, and secretary of state, has been no less illustrious than his 
professional triumphs ; but, as far as literature is concerned, he will 
be remembered by his state-papers and speeches. His style is re- 
markable for great clearness of statement. It is singularly emphatic." 
It is impressive rather than brilliant, and occasionally rises to absolute 
grandeur. It is evidently formed on the highest English models ; 
and the reader conjectures his love of Milton, from the noble sim- 
plicity of his language, and fondness for sublime rather than apt 
figures. Clearness of statement, vigor of reasoning, and a faculty of 
making a question plain to the understanding, by the mere terms in 
which it is presented, are the traits which uniformly distinguish his 
writings, evident alike in a diplomatic note, a legislative debate, and 
an historical discourse. His dignity of expression, breadth of view, 
and force of thought, realize the ideal of a republican statesman, in 
regard, at least to natural endowments; and his presence and manner, 
in the prime of his life, were analogous. Independent of their logical 
and rhetorical merit, these writings may be deemed invaluable from 
the nationality of their tone and spirit. They awaken patriotic re- 
flection and sentiment, and are better adapted to warn, to enlighten, 
and to cheer the consciousness of the citizen, than any American 
works, of a didactic kind, yet produced. 

In the speeches of Clay there is a chivalric freshness, which rea- 
dily explains his great popularity as a man; not so profound as 
Webster, he is far more rhetorical, and equally patriotic. Calhoun 
37 



444 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



[CHAP. T. 



is eminently individual ; his mind has that precise energy which is 
so effectual in debate; his style of argument is concise; and in 
personal aspect he was quite as remarkable — the incarnation of intense 
purpose and keen perception. These and many other eminent men 
have admirably illustrated that department of oratory which belongs 
to statesmen. 

Fisher Ames, William Wirt, John Quincy Adams, Hugh S. 
Legare, and others, famed as debaters, have united to this distinction 
the renown of able rhetoricians on literary and historical occasions ; 
and to these we may add the names of Verplanck, Chief Justice 
Story, Chancellor Kent, Rufus Choate, Randolph, Winthrop, 
Burgess, Preston, Benton, Prentiss, Bethune, Bushnell, Dewey, 
Birney, Hillhouse, Sprague, Wayland, A. H. Everett, Horace 
Binney, Dr. Francis, Sumner, Whipple, Hillard, and other authors 
of occasional addresses, having by their scope of thought or beauty 
of style, a permanent literary value. The most voluminous writer 
in this department, however, is Edward Everett. His two large and 
elegant volumes not only exhibit the finest specimens of rhetorical 
writing, but they more truly represent the cultivated American mind 
in literature, than any single work with which we are acquainted. 
Oratory has always flourished in republics ; it is a form of intellec- 
tual development to which free political institutions give both scope 
and inspiration; and we hesitate not to declare that Edward Everett^s 
Orations are as pure in style, as able in statement, and as authentic 
as expressions of popular history, feeling and opinion in a finished 
and elegant shape, as were those of Demosthenes and Cicero in their 
day. Let not the frequency of public addresses, and the ephemeral 
character they so often possess, blind our countrymen to the perma- 
nent and intrinsic merits of these Orations. They embody the 
results of long and faithful research into the most important facts 
of our history; they give '^a local habitation and a name'' to the 
most patriotic associations; their subjects, not less than their senti- 
ments, are thoroughly national ; not a page but glows with the most 
intelligent love of country, nor a figure, description, or appeal but 
what bears evidence of scholarship, taste, and just sentiment. If a 
highly-cultivated foreigner were to ask us to point him to any single 
work which would justly inform him of the spirit of our institutions 
and history, and, at the same time, afford an adequate idea of our 
present degree of culture, we should confidently designate these 
Orations. The great battles of the Revolution, the sufferings and 
principles of the early colonists, the characters of our leading states- 
men, the progress of arts, sciences, and education among us — all 
those great interests which are characteristic to the philosopher — of 
a nation's life — are here expounded, now by important facts, now by 
eloquent illustrations, and again in the form of impressive and grace- 
ful comments. History, essays, descriptive sketches, biographical 



CHAP. I.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



445 



data, picturesque detail, and general principles, are all blent together 
with a tact, a distinctness, a felicity of expression, and a unity of 
style, unexampled in this species of writing. Mr. Everett has made 
the art of oratory his peculiar study; again and again his beautiful 
elocution has charmed audiences composed of the most intelligent 
and fairest of our citizens. Many of these occasions have a tradi- 
tional renown. Indeed, whoever has heard one of these addresses 
delivered, has enjoyed a memorable gratification; not one of them 
but has to every true American heart and mind a sterling value, as 
well as an enduring fascination. They include the most salient points 
in our annals; they consecrate the memories of some of the noblest 
spirits who have blessed our country; they celebrate events hallowed 
by results which, at this hour, are agitating the world ; and all these 
attractions are independent of the rare and invaluable literary merit 
which distinguishes them. No public or private library should be 
without them ; the old should grow familiar with their pages to keep 
alive the glow of enlightened patriotism ; and the young, to learn 
a wise love of country and the graces of refined scholarship. 

There is no branch of literature that can be cultivated in a republic 
with more advantage to the reader, and satisfaction to the author, 
than History. Untrammelled by proscription, and unawed by poli- 
tical authority, the annalist may trace the events of the past, and 
connect them, by philosophical analogy, with the tendencies of the 
present, free to impart the glow of honest conviction to his record, 
to analyse the conduct of leaders, the theory of parties, and the 
significance of events. The facts, too, of our history are compara- 
tively recent. It is not requisite to conjure up fabulous traditions or 
explore the dim regions of antiquity. From her origin the nation 
was civilized. A backward glance at the state of Europe, the causes 
of emigration, and the standard of political and social advancement 
at the epoch of the first colonies in North x\merica, is all that we 
need to start intelligently upon the track of our country's marvellous 
growth, and brief, though eventful career. There are relations, 
however, both to the past and future, which render American history 
the most suggestive episode in the annals of the world ; and give it 
a universal as well as special dignity. To those who chiefly value 
facts as illustrative of principles, and see in the course of events the 
grand problem of humanity, the occurrences in the New World from 
its discovery to the present hour, offer a comprehensive interest unre- 
cognised by those who only regard details. Justly interpreted, the 
liberty and progress of mankind, illustrated by the history of the 
United States, is but the practical demonstration of principles which 
the noblest spirits of England advocated with their pens, and often 
sealed with their blood. It is as lineal descendants in the love of 
freedom and humanity, of Milton, Locke, and Sidney, that the intel- 
ligent votaries of American liberty should be considered. It is easy 



416 



A SKETCH OP AI\IERrOAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. I. 



to trace in the municipal regulations, the tone of society, and in the 
press of the colonists, a recognition of and familiarity with the re- 
sponsibilities and progressive tendency of liberal institutions. Their 
minds were fed upon the manly nutriment of English letters ; they 
knew by heart the bold sentiments of those intellectual benefactors 
v/ho adorned the age of Elizabeth, and the times of Cromwell; they 
gloried in the best triumphs of the Commonwealth ; and with the 
earnest reflection and generous knowledge thus derived from their 
ancestral country, they united the adventurous spirit of the pioneer, 
and the enthusiasm of the colonist having a new and open field for 
experiment both of thought and action ; accustomed to the elective 
franchise, imbued with attachment to freedom, and enlightened by 
sympathy with those who had nobly pleaded and bravely suffered in 
her cause at home, we cannot but perceive that the colonists achieved 
a revolution in the manner, rather than in the spirit, of their insti- 
tutions ; they carried out what had long existed in idea ; and, as it 
were, actualised the views of Algernon Sydney and his illustrious 
compeers. It is through this intimate and direct relation with the 
past of the Old World, and as initiative to her ultimate self-enfran- 
chisement, that our history daily grows in value and interest, unfolds 
new meaning, and becomes endeared to all thinking men. It is a 
link between two great cycles of human progress; the ark that, 
floating safely on the ocean-tide of humanity, preserves those ele- 
ments of national freedom which are the vital hope of the world. 

Glorious, however, as is the theme, it is only within the last quarter 
of a century that it has found any adequate illustration. The labors 
of American historians have been, for the most part, confined to the 
acquisition of materials, the unadorned record of facts; their subjects 
have been chiefly local; and, in very few cases, have their labors de- 
rived any charm from the graces of style, or the resources of philo- 
sophy : they are usually crude memoranda of events, not always 
reliable, though often curious. In a few instances care and scholar- 
ship render such contributions to American history intrinsically valu- 
able ; but, taken together, the}'' are rather materials for the annalisP 
than complete works, and as such will prove of considerable value. 
It is to collect and preserve these and other records, that historical 
societies have been formed in so many of the states. A storehouse 
of data is thus formed, to which the future historian can resort; and 
probably'the greater part of the local narratives are destined either 
to be re-written with all the amenities of literary tact and refinement, 
or, cast in the mould of genius, become identified with the future 
triumphs of the American novelist and poet. In the meantime, all 
honor is due to those who have assiduously labored to record the 
great events which have here occurred, and to preserve the memo- 
ries of our patriotaJ Jared Sparks, now president of Harvard Uni- 
versity, has labored most effectually in this sphere. In a series of 



CHAP. I.] 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



447 



well-written biographies, and in the collected letters of Washington 
and Franklin, which he has edited, we have a rich fund of national 
material.* 

Among the earliest and most indefatigable laborers in the field of 
history was Kamsay. His " Historical View of the World, from the 
earliest Record to the Nineteenth Century, with a particular Refer- 
ence to the state of Society, Literature, Religion, and Form of 
Grovernment of the United States of America,^' was published in 
1819; a previous work early in 1817; and more than forty years, 
during intervals of leisure in an active life, were thus occupied by a 
man not more remarkable for mental assiduity than for all the social 
graces and solid excellencies of human character. 



* Among the local and special histories, all more or less valuable as books 
of reference, and some having both literary and authentic merit, are 'Belknap's 
New Hampshire,' 'Sullivan's Maine,' 'Morton's New England Memorial,' 
' Trumbull's Connecticut,' ' Smith's New York,' ' Watson's Annals of Penn- 
sylvania,' ' Williams's Vermont,' ' Stephens's Georgia,' ' Minot's Massachu- 
setts,' ' Stithe's Virginia,' 'Winthrop's Journal,' ' Thatcher's Journal,' 'Flint's 
Western States,' 'Gayerre's Louisiana, ' 'O'Callahan's New York,' ' Proud's 
Pennsylvania,' 'Moultrie's Revolution in North and South Carolina and 
Georgia,' 'Bishop White's History of the Episcopal Church,' 'Jefferson's 
Notes on Virginia,' 'Barton's Florida,' 'Young's Chronicles of the J^irst 
Planters of Massachusetts Bay' and 'Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of 
New Plymouth,' in N. E. Cheever's 'Journal of the Pilgrims,' Frothingham's 
'History of the Siege of Boston,' 'Hammond's Political History of New 
York,' 'Holmes's Annals,' 'Kip's Early Jesuit Missions in North America,' 
' Upham's History of the Salem Witchcraft,' ' Mayer's History of the Mexi- 
can War,' 'Miner's History of Wyoming,' ' Marmette's History of the Valley 
of the Mississippi,' ' Newell's History of the Revolution in I'exas,' 'Smith's 
Virginia,' ' Sprague's History of the Florida War,' J. T. Irving's ' Conquest 
of Florida,' 'Thomas's Historical Account of Pennsylvania,' 'Thompson's 
Long Island,' ' Buckingham's Reminiscences,' ' Upham's Flistory of the Salem 
Witchcraft,' ' Whittier's Supernaturalism in New England,' ' Pickett's Ala- 
bama,' ' Thomas's His.tory of Printing,' ' Morton's Louisiana,' 'Macy's Nan- 
tucket,' ' Sewell's Quakers,' 'Drake's Indians,' ' Camther's Cavaliers of Vir- 
ginia,' 'Alden's Collections,' 'Francis Baylies' Colony of Plymouth," Brad- 
ford's History,' and ' Green's Historical Studies.' 

There are also many interesting volumes of American biography. Those 
of revolutionary and colonial times are embodied in the series edited by Sparks ; 
and among other pleasing and valuable works in this department, are the fol- 
lowing : — ' Marshall's Life of Washington,' ' Tudor's Otis,' 'Austin's Gerry,' 
' Wirt's Patrick Henry,' ' Wheaton's Pinckney,' the ' Life of Josiah Quincy,' 
by his son, ' Colden's Fulton,' the 'Life of John Adams,' by his grandson, 
'Tucker's Jefferson,' 'Knapp's American Biographies,' 'Biddle's Cabot,' the 
' Life of Alexander Hamilton,' by his son, the ' Life of Washington,' ' Frank- 
lin,' 'John Jay,' ' Governeur Morris,' by Sparks, ' Gibbs's Life of Wolcott,' 
' Kennedy's Life of Wirt,' ' Life of Judge Story,' by his son, ' Life of William 
E. Chauncey,' by his nephew, 'Life of Margaret Fuller Ossoli,' 'Dunlap's 
American Theatre and History of the Arts of Design,' 'Lives of Generals 
Putnam, Greene, Marion, and Captain Smith,' by W. Gilmore Simms, Col. 
Stone's 'Life of Brant and Red- Jacket,' 'Davis's Life of Aaron Burr,' ' Life 
of Reed,' 'Life of Stirling,' 'Sabine's American Loyalists,' ' V/ynne's Lives 
of Eminent Americans,' ' Osgood's Studies in Christian Biography,' ' Mrs. 
Tree's Huguenots,' 'Mrs. EUett's V/omen of the Revolution,' 'Sherburne's 
Paul Jones,' and ' MacKenzie's Decatur and Perry.' 



448 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. I. 



Dr. David Ramsay, a native of Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, 
was the son of an Irisli emigrant. After graduating at Princeton 
College, and, according to the custom of the period, devoting two 
years to private tuition, he studied medicine, and removed to Charles- 
ton, South Carolina, where ho soon became a distinguished patriotic 
writer. He was a surgeon in the American army, and active in the 
councils of the land, suffering, with other votaries of independence, 
the penalty of several months' banishment to St. Augustine. He 
earnestly opposed, in the legislature of the state, the confiscation of 
loyalist property. In 1782, he became a member of the Continental 
Congress; he three years after represented the Charleston district; 
and for a year was president of that body, in the absence of Han- 
cock. He died in 1815, in consequence of wounds received from the 
pistol of a maniac. Remarkable for a conciliatory disposition and 
ardent patriotism, he was a fluent speaker, and a man of great lite- 
rary industry. Besides a history of the revolution in South Carolina, 
which was translated and published in France, a history of the Ame- 
rican revolution, which reached a second edition, a life of Washing- 
ton, and a history of South Carolina, he left a history of the United 
States, from their first settlement to the year 1808, — afterwards con- 
tinued, by other hands, to the Treaty of Ghent, and published in 
three octavo volumes, — a monument of his unwearied and zealous 
research, and patient labor for the good of the public and the honor 
of his country. 

The most successful attempt yet made to reduce the chaotic but 
rich materials of American history to order, beauty, and moral sig- 
nificance, is the work of George Bancroft.* The inadequate history 
of Judge Marshall, and the careful one relating to the colonial period, 
by Grahame, were previously the only works devoted to the subject. 
Our revolution, in its most interesting details, was known in Europe 
chiefly through the attractive pages of Carlo Botta. With the 
ground thus unoccupied, Mr. Bancroft commenced his labors. He 
was prepared for them not only by culture and talent, but by an 
earnest sympathy with the spirit of the age he was to illustrate. 
Having passed through the discipline of a brilliant scholastic career 
at the best university in the country, studied theology, and engaged 
in the classical education of youth, he had also visited Europe, and 
become imbued with the love of German literature ; he was for two 



* George Bancroft was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the year 1800; 
he is the son of Rev. Aaron Bancroft, for more than half a century minister 
of that town, a man highly venerated, and devoted to historical research, par- 
ticularly as regards his native country. Thus under the paternal roof, and from 
his earliest age, the sympathies and taste of the son were awakened to the 
subject of American history. He graduated in the first rank of Harvard Col- 
lege in 1817. In 1834 appeared the first volume of his History of the Coloni- 
zation of the United States; in 1837 the second, in J840 the third, and in 
1852 the fourth, being the introductory History of the Revolution. 



CHAP. I.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



449 



years a pupil of Heeren, at Grottingen, and mingled freely ■with the 
learned coteries of Berlin and Heidelberg. His two first published 
works, after his return to the United States, are remarkably sugges- 
tive of his traits of mind, and indicate that versatility which is so 
desirable in an historian. These were a small volume of m.etrical 
pieces, mainly expressive of his individual feelings and experience ; 
and a translation of Professor Heeren's " Reflections on the Politics 
of Ancient Grreece ; " thus early both the poetic and the philosophio 
element were developed ; and although, soon after, Mr. Bancroft 
entered actively into political life, and held several high offices under 
the general government, including that of Minister to Grreat Britain, 
he continued to prosecute his historical researches, under the most 
favourable auspices, both at home and abroad, and from time to time 
put forth the successive volumes of his "History of the United 
States.'^ To this noble task he brought great and patient industry, 
an eloquent style, and a capacity to array the theme in the garb of 
philosophy. Throughout he is the advocate of democratic institu- 
tions; and in the early volumes, where, by the nature of the subject, 
there is little scope for attractive detail, by infusing a reflective tone, 
he rescues the narrative from dryness and monotony. Instead of a 
series of facts arranged without any unity of sentiment, we have the 
idea and principle of civic advancement towards freedom, as a thread 
of gold upon which the incidents are strung. He is remarkably 
assiduous in unfolding the experience of the first discoverers, and the 
political creeds of the early settlers; many curious and authentic 
details of aboriginal habits are also given ; there are everywhere signs 
of careful research and genuine enthusiasm. Owing, perhaps, to the 
unequal interest of the subject, the same glow and finish are not 
uniformly perceptible in the style, in which we occasionally discern 
an obvious strain after rhetorical effect ; and sometimes the influence 
of the author's political opinions is too apparent ; but these are inci- 
dental defects ; the general spirit, execution, and effect of the work is 
elevated, genial, and highly instructive. Mr. Bancroft has, at least, 
vindicated his right to compose the annals of his country, by giving 
to the record that vitality, both of description and of thought, which 
distinguishes a genius for history from the mere ability to collate 
facts. His manner and reflection rise, too, with his subject; the 
outline becomes firmer, and the inferences clearer, as he emerges 
from the colonial and enters the revolutionaj-y era. Combining 
apparently in his own mind, the traits of his two-fold culture, we 
have the speculative tendency of the German, and the graphic deli- 
neation of the English writers ; in a word, he gives us pictures like 
the one, and arguments and suggestions like the other; carefully 
stating the fact, and earnestly deducing from it the idea; he is more 
comprehensive as a philosopher than a limner; and yet no tyro iu 
the latter's art^ for here and there we encounter a character as tersely 



450 A SKETCH OP AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. I. 

drawn, and a scene as vividly painted as any of those "which have 
rendered the best modern historians popular. But it is the under- 
current of thought, rather than the brilliant surface of description 
which gives intellectual value to Bancroft's History, and has secured 
for it so high and extensive a reputation. In sentiment and princi- 
ples, it is thoroughly American • but in its style and philosophy, it 
has that broad and eclectic spirit appropriate both to the general 
interest of the subject, and the enlightened sympathies of the age. 
Perhaps the best way to appreciate the literary merits of Bancroft's 
History is to compare it with the cold and formal annals, familiar to 
our childhood. Unwearied and patient in research, discriminating 
in the choice of authorities, and judicious in estimating testimony, 
Bancroft has the art and the ardour, the intelligence and the tact 
required to fuse into a vital unity the narrative thus carefully gleaned. 
He knows how to condense language, evolve thought from fact, and 
make incident and characterization illustrate the progress of events. 
This bold, active, concentrated manner is what is needed to give 
permanent and living interest to history. Portraits of individuals, 
scenes pregnant with momentous results and philosophic inferences, 
alternate in his pages. The character of Pitt, the death of Montcalm, 
and the rationale of Puritanism, are very diverse subjects, yet they 
are each related to the development of the principle of freedom on 
this continent ; and accordingly received both the artistic and analy- 
tical treatment of the American historian. 

Hildreth's "History of the United States'' will probably become 
a standard book of reference. Ehetorical grace and effect, pic- 
turesqueness and the impress of individual opinion, are traits which 
the author either rejects or keeps in abeyance. His narrative is plain 
and straightforward, confined to facts which he seems to have gleaned 
with great care and conscientiousness. The special merit of his work 
consists in the absence of whatever can possibly be deemed either 
irrelevant or ostentatious. A " History of Liberty" by S. A. Elliot, 
is the work of scholarship and taste, but not of poetic inspiration or 
philosophy • it is, however, an elegant addition to our native writings 
in this sphere. In a popular form, the most creditable performance 
is the " Field-Book of the Revolution," by Benson J. Lossing, a 
wood-engraver by profession, who has visited all the scenes of that 
memorable war, and, with pen and pencil, delineated each incident 
of importance, and every object of local interest. His work is one 
which is destined to find its way to every farmer's hearth, and to all 
the school libraries of our country. 

The freshness of his subjects, the beauty of his style, and the vast 
difficulties he bravely surmounted, gained for William H. Prescott"^ 

* William H. Prescott is the grandson of Colonel William Prescott, who 
commanded the Americans at the battle of Bunker Hill. He was born in Sa- 
lem, Massachusetts, on the 4th of May, 1796. Educated in boyhood by Dr. 



CHAP. T.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



451 



not only an extensive but a remarkably speedy reputation, after the 
appearance of- his first history. Many years of study, travel, and 
occasional practice in writing, preceded the long-cherishecl design of 
achieving an historical fame. Although greatly impeded at the out- 
set by a vision so imperfect as to threaten absolute blindness, in other 
respects he "was singularly fortunate. Unlike the majority of intel- 
lectual aspirants, he had at his command the means to procure the 
needful but expensive materials for illustrating a subject more prolific, 
at once of romantic charms and great elements of human destiny, 
than any unappropriated theme offered by the whole range of his- 
tory. It included the momentous voyage of Columbus, the fall of 
the Moorish empire in Spain, and the many and eventful consequences 
thence resulting. Aided by the researches of our minister at Madrid,* 
himself an enthusiast in letters, Mr. Prescott soon possessed himself 
of ample documents and printed authorities. These he caused to be 
read to him, and during the process dictated notes, which were after- 
wards so frequently repeated orally that his mind gradually possessed 
itself of all the important details ; and these he clothed in his own 
language, arranged them with discrimination, and made out a con- 
secutive and harmonious narrative. Tedious as such a course must 
be, and laborious in the highest degree as it proved, I am disposed 
to attribute to it, in a measure at least, some of Mr. Prescott's greatest 
charms as an historian : the remarkable evenness and sustained har- 
mony, the unity of conception and ease of manner as rare as it is 
delightful. The ' History of Ferdinand and Isabella' is a work that 
unites the fascination of romantic fiction with the grave interest of 
authentic events. Its author makes no pretension to analytical power, 
except in the arrangement of his materials; he is content to describe, 
and his talents are more artistic than philosophical ; neither is any 
cherished theory or principle obvious; his ambition is apparently 
limited to skilful narration. Indefatigable in research, sagacious in 
the choice and comparison of authorities, serene in temper, graceful 
in style, and pleasing in sentiment, he possesses all the requisites for 
an agreeable writer; while his subjects have yielded so much of pic- 
turesque material and romantic interest, as to atone for the lack of 
any more original or brilliant qualities in the author. ' Ferdinand 
and Isabella' was followed by ' The Conquest of Mexico,^ and ' The 
Conquest of Peru.' The scenic descriptions and the portraits of the 
Spanish leaders, and of Montezuma and Gautimozin, in the former work, 
give to it all the charm of an effective romance. Few works of ima- 
gination have more power to win the fancy and touch the heart. The 

Gardiner, a fine classical teacher, he entered Harvard College in 1811. He 
studied law. and passed two years in Europe. In 1838 was published his 
' History of Ferdinand and Isabella,' which met with almost immediate and un- 
precedented success. It was soon translated into all the modern European 
languages. 

* Alexander H. Everett. 



452 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. I. 



insight aiForded into Aztec civilization, is another source of interest. 
The moral qualities of considerate reflection and frankness are memo- 
rable characleristics of Prescott. He has added to the standard lite- 
rature of the age, and to the literary fame of his country, by his 
graceful, judicious, and attractive labors in a field comparatively new, 
and abounding in artistic material. 

Prescott is said to be engaged on a history of 'Philip of Spain/ 
In his previous efforts, he had the advantage of subjects not identified 
with the prejudices and passions of the present age ; and not demand- 
ing for their just display any great reach of thought. His well- 
balanced periods, quiet and sustained tone, and agreeable manner, 
therefore, had their full effect. Perhaps, had he thus discussed his- 
torical themes nearer the sympathies of the hour, this absence of 
earnestness and reflection would have been more consciously felt by 
his many delighted readers. 

Another of the few standard works in this department, of native 
origin, is the ' Life and Voyages of Columbus,' by Washington 
Irving. Ostensibly a biography, it partakes largely of the historical 
character. As in the case of Prescott, the friendly suggestions of 
our minister at Madrid greatly promoted the enterprise. The work 
is based on the researches of Navarette ; and it is a highly fortunate 
circumstance that the crude, though invaluable data thus gathered, 
was first put in shape and adorned with the elegances of a polished 
diction, by an American writer at once so popular and so capable as 
Irving. The result is a life of Columbus authentic, clear, and ani- 
mated in narration, graphic in its descriptive episodes, and sustained 
and finished in style. It is a permanent contribution to English as 
well as American literature ; — one which was greatly needed, and most 
appropriately supplied. 

Henry Wheaton, long our minister at Berlin, is chiefly known to 
literary fame by his able 'Treatise on International Law;' but, while 
Charge d' Affaires in Denmark, he engaged with zeal in historical 
studies, and published in London, in 1831, a ' History of the North- 
men a most curious, valuable, and suggestive, though limited work. 

Cooper's ' Naval History of the United States,' although not so 
complete as is desirable, is a most interesting work, abounding in 
scenes of generous valor and rare excitement, recounted with the tact 
and spirit which the author's taste and practice so admirably fitted 
him to exhibit on such a theme. Some of the descriptions of naval 
warfare are picturesque and thrilling in the highest degree. The 
work, too, is an eloquent appeal to patriotic sentiment and national 
pride. It is one of the most characteristic histories, both in regard 
to subject and style, yet produced in America. 

One of the most satisfactory of recent historical works is ' The 
; Conspiracy of Pontiac,' by Francis Parkman, of Boston. During a 
tour in the Far West, where he hunted the buffldo and fraternized 



CHAP. II.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATUHE. 



453 



with the Indians, the author gained that practical knowledge of abo- 
riginal habits and character, which enabled him to delineate the sub- 
ject chosen with singular truth and effect. Having faithfully explored 
the annals of the French and Indian war, he applied to its elucida- 
tion the vivid impressions derived from his sojourn in forest and 
prairie, his observation of Indian life, and his thorough knowledge 
of the history of the Red-men. The result is not only a reliable and 
admirably planned narrative, but one of the most picturesque and 
romantic yet produced in America. Few subjects are more dramatic 
and rich in local associations ; and the previous discipline and excel- 
lent style of the author, have imparted to it a permanent attraction. 



CHAPTER II. 

Belles Lettres — Influence of British Essayists — Franklin — Dennie — Signs of 
Literary Improvement — Jonathan Oldstyle — Washington Irving — His 
Knickerbocker — Sketch-Book — His other Works — Popularity — Tour on the 
Prairies — Character as an Author — Dana — Wilde — Hudson — Griswold — 
Lowell — Whipple — Ticknor — Walker — Wayland — James — Emerson — 
Transcendentalists — Madame Ossoli — Emerson's Essays — Orville Dewey — 
Humorous Writers — Belles Lettres — Tudor — Wirt — Sands — Fay — Walsh — 
Mitchell — Kimball — American Travellers — Causes of their Success as Wri- 
ters — Fiction — Charles Brockden Brown — His Novels — James Fenimore 
Cooper — His Novels — their Popularity and Characteristics — Nathaniel 
Hawthorne — His Works and Genius — Other American Writers of Fiction. 

The colloquial and observant character given to English literature 
by the wits, politicians, and essayists of Queen Anne's time — the 
social and agreeable phase which the art of writing exhibited in the 
form of the ' Spectator,' ^ Gruardian,' ' Tattler,' and other popular 
works of the kind, naturally found imitators in the American Colo- 
nies. The earliest indication of a taste for belles-lettres is the 
republication in the newspapers of New England, of some of the 
fresh lucubrations of Steele and Addison. ' The Lay-Preacher,' by 
Dennie, was the first successful imitation of this fashionable species 
of literature; more characteristic, however, of the sound common 
sense and utilitarian instincts of the people, were the essays of 
Franklin, commenced in his brother's journal, then newly-est^iblished 
at Boston. Taste for the amenities of intellectual life, however, at 
this period, was chiefly gratified by recourse to the emanations of 
the British press ; and it is some years after that we perceive signs 
of that native impulse in this sphere which proved the germ of 
American literature. "If we are not mistaken in the signs of the 
times," says Buckminster (in an oration delivered at Cambridge and 
published in the ^Anthology,' a Boston magazine, which, with the 



454 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. 11. 



Port Folio issued at Philadelpliia, were the first literary journals of 
high aims in America) " the genius of our literature begins to show 
symptoms of vigor, and to meditate a bolder flight. The spirit of 
criticism begins to plume itself, and education, as it assumes a more 
learned form, will take a higher aim. If we are not misled by our 
hopes, the dream of ignorance is at least broken, and there are signs 
that the period is approaching when we may say of our country, tuus 
jam regnat Apollo.^' This prophecy had received some confirmation 
in the grace and local observation manifest in a series of letters which 
appeared in the New York Chronicle, signed Jonathan Oldstyle, 
Gent. — the first productions of Washington Irving, the Goldsmith of 
America, who was born in New York, April 6, 1783. Symptoms 
of alarming disease soon after induced a voyage to Europe ; and he 
returned to the island of Manhattan, the scene of his boyish rambles 
and youthful reveries, with a mind expanded by new scenes, and his 
natural love of travel and elegant literature deepened. Although 
ostensibly a law-student in the ofiice of J udge Hofi'man, his time was 
devoted to social intercourse with his kindred, who were established 
in business in New York, and a few genial companions, to meditative 
loiterings in the vicinity of the picturesque river so dear to his heart, 
and to writing magazine papers. The happy idea of a humorous 
description of his native town, under the old Dutch governors, was 
no sooner conceived than executed with inimitable wit and origi- 
nality. Not then contemplating the profession of letters, he did not 
take advantage of the remarkable success that attended this work, 
of which Sir Walter Scott thus speaks, in one of his letters to an 
American friend : " I beg you to accept my best thanks for the 
uncommon degree of entertainment which I have received from the 
most excellently jocose history of New York. I am sensible that as 
a stranger to American parties and politics, I must lose much of the 
concealed satire of the piece, but I must own that, looking at the 
simple and obvious meaning only, I have never read anything so 
closely resembling the style of Dean Swift as the annals of Diedrich 
Knickerbocker. I have been employed these few evenings in read- 
ing them aloud to Mrs. S. and two ladies, who are our guests, and 
our sides have been absolutely sore with laughing. I think, too, 
there are passages which indicate that the author possesses power of 
a different kind, and has some touches which remind me much of 
Sterne." ^ Salmagundi,^ which Mr. Irving had previously under- 
taken, in conjunction with Paulding, proved a hit, and established 
the fame of its authors ; it was in form and method of publication 
imitated from the ' Spectator,' but in details, spirit, and aim, so ex- 
quisitely adapted to the latitude of New York, that its appearance 
was hailed with a delight hitherto unknown ; it was, in fact, a com- 
plete triumph of local genius. From these pursuits, the author 
turned to commercial toil, in connection with which, he embarked 



CHAP. II.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



455 



for England in 1815, and while there, a reverse of fortune led to his 
resuming the pen as a means of subsistence. In his next work, the 
' Sketch-Book,^ Sir Walter's opinion of his pathetic vein was fully 
realized; ^The Wife,' 'The Pride of the Village,' and ' The Broken 
Heart,' at once took their places as gems of English sentiment and 
description. Nor were the associations of home inoperative; and 
the 'Legend of Sleepy Hollow' first gave ''a local habitation," in 
our fresh land, to native fancy. His impressions of domestic life in 
Great Britain, were soon after given to the public in ' Bracebridge 
Hall,' and some of his continental experiences embodied in the 
' Tales of a Traveller.' Soon after, Mr. Irving visited Spain to 
write the 'Life of Columbus,' to which we have before alluded. 
His sojourn at the Alhambra, and at Abbotsford and Newstead 
Abbey, are the subjects of other graceful and charming volumes ; 
while 'Astoria, or Anecdotes of an Enterprise beyond the Rocky 
Mountains,' and-^he 'Life of Mohammed,' proved solid as well as 
elegant contributions to our standard literature. 

There are writers who have so ministered to our enjoyment as to 
Decome associated with our happiest literary recollections. The com- 
panionship of their works has been to us as that of an entertaining 
and cherished friend, whose converse cheers the hours of languor, 
and brightens the period of recreative pleasure. We are wont to 
think and to speak of them with quite a different sentiment from 
that which prompts us to speculate upon less familiar and less en- 
deared productions. There is ever within us a sense of obligation, 
an identification of our individual partiality with the author, when 
the fruits of his labors are alluded to, his merits discussed, or his 
very name mentioned. The sensitiveness appropriate to the writer's 
self seems, in a manner, transferred to our own bosoms; his faults are 
scarcely recognised, and we guard his laurels as if our own efforts had 
aided in their winning, and our own happiness was involved in their 
preservation. Such feelings obtain, indeed, to a greater or less extent, 
with reference to all the master spirits in literature, whose labors have 
been devoted, with signal success, to the gratification and elevation 
of humanity. But the degree of permanency for such tributary sen- 
timent in the general mind, depends very much upon the field of 
effort selected by the favorite author, and his own peculiar circum- 
stances and character. Subjects of temporary interest, however ad- 
mirably treated, and with whatever applause received, are obviously 
ill calculated to retain, for any considerable length of time, a strong- 
hold upon human regard ; and, notwithstanding the alleged incon- 
sistency between an author's personal character and history and the 
influence of his works, the motives adduced by Addison for prefacing 
the Spectator with an account of himself, are deeply founded in 
human nature. Not merely contemporary sentiment, but after 
opinion in relation to literary productions, will be materially affected 
38 



456 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. U. 



loj what is known of the author. The present prevailing tendency 
to inquire, often with a truly reprehensible minuteness, into whatever 
in the most distant manner relates to the leading literary men of the 
age, affords ample evidence of this truth. Indeed, we may justly 
anticipate that literary, if not general biography, will, ere long, from 
the^very interest manifested in regard to it, attain an importance, and 
ultimately a philosophical dignity, such as shall engage in its behalf 
the sedulous labors of the best endowed and most accomplished 
minds. 

The occasion which first induced Greoffrey Crayon to delineate, and 
those which have suggested his subsequent pencillings, were singu- 
larly happy; and the circumstances under which these masterly 
sketches were produced, nay, the whole history of the man, are sig- 
nally fitted to deepen the interest which his literary merits necessarily 
excited. In saying this, we are not unmindful of the prejudices so 
ungenerously forced upon the attention of the absentee, and so affect- 
ingly alluded to in the opening of his first work after returning from 
Europe ; but do we err in deeming those prejudices as unchargeable 
upon the mass of his countrymen, as they were essentially unjust 
and partial ? Nay, are we not, in this volume, with our author's 
characteristic genuineness of feeling and simplicity, assured of his 
own settled and happy sense of the high place he occupies in the es- 
timation and love of Americans ? 

The 'Tour on the Prairies' appeared in 1836. It is an unpre- 
tending account, comprehending a period of about four weeks, of 
travelhng and hunting excursions upon the vast western plains. The 
local features of this interesting region have been displayed to us in 
several works of fiction, of which it has formed the scene ; and more 
formal illustrations of the extensive domain denominated The West, 
and its denizens, have been repeatedly presented to the public. Bui 
in this volume one of the most extraordinary and attractive portions 
of the great subject is discussed, not as the subsidiary part of a ro- 
mantic story, nor yet in the desultory style of epistolary composition, 
but in the deliberate, connected form of a retrospective narration. 
When we say that the 'Tour on the Prairies' is rife with the charac- 
teristics of its author, no ordinary eulogium is bestowed. His graphic 
power is manifest throughout. The boundless prairies stretch out 
inimitably to the fancy, as the eye scans his descriptions. The ath- 
letic figures of the riflemen, the gaily arrayed Indians, the heavy 
buffalo and the graceful deer, pass in strong relief and startling con- 
trast before us. We are stirred by the bustle of the camp at dawn, 
and soothed by its quiet, or delighted with its picturesque aspect 
under the shadow of night. The imagination revels amid the green 
oak clumps and verdant pea vines, the expanded plains and the 
glancing river, the forest aisles and the silent stars. Nor is this all. 
Our hearts thrill at the vivid representations of a primitive and ex- 



CHAP. II.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATUEE. 



457 



cursive existence ; we inyoluntarily yearn, as we read, for the genial 
activity and the perfect exposure to the influences of nature in all her 
free magnificence, of a woodland and adventurous life ; the morning 
strain of the bugle, the excitement of the chase, the delicious repast, 
the forest gossiping, the sweet repose beneath the canopy of heaven 
— how inviting, as depicted by such a pencil ! 

Nor has the author failed to invigorate and render doubly attrac- 
tive these descriptive drawings, with the peculiar light and shade of 
his own rich humor, and the mellow softness of his ready sym- 
pathy. A less skilful draftsman would, perhaps, in the account of 
the preparations for departure (Chapter III.)? have spoken of the 
hunters, the fires, and the steeds — but who, except G-eoffrey Crayon, 
would have been so quaintly mindful of the little dog, and the 
manner in which he regarded the operations of the farrier? How 
inimitably the Bee Hunt is portrayed ; and what have we of the kind 
so racy, as the account of the Republic of Prairie Dogs, unless it 
be that of the Eookery in Bracebridge Hall? What expressive 
portraits are the delineations of our rover's companions. How 
consistently drawn throughout, and in what fine contrast, are the 
reserved and saturnine Beatte, and the vain-glorious, sprightly, and 
versatile Tonish, A golden vein of vivacious, yet chaste comparison 
— that beautiful, yet rarely well-managed species of wit; and a 
wholesome and plea.sing sprinkling of moral comment — that delicate 
and often most efficacious medium of useful impressions — intertwine 
and vivify the main narrative ! Something, too, of that fine pathos 
which enriches his earlier productions, enhances the value of the 
present. He tells us, indeed, with commendable honesty, of his 
new appetite for destruction, which the game of the prairie excited ; 
but we cannot fear for the tenderness of a heart that sympathises so 
readily with sufi"ering, and yields so gracefully to kindly impulses. 
He gazes upon the noble courser of the wilds, and wishes that his 
freedom may be perpetuated; he recognises the touching instinct 
which leads the wounded elk to turn aside and die in retiracy; he 
reciprocates the attachment of the beast which sustains him, and 
more than all, can minister even to the foibles of a fellow-being, 
rather than mar the transient reign of human pleasure. 

It has been said that Mr. Irving, at one period of his life, seriously 
proposed to himself the profession of an artist. The idea was a le- 
gitimate result of his intellectual constitution ; and although he denied 
its development in one form, in another it has fully vindicated itself. 
Many of his volumes are a collection of sketches, embodied happily 
in language, since thereby their more general enjoyment is insured, 
but susceptible of immediate transfer to the canvas of the painter. 
These are like a fine gallery of pictures, wherein all his countrymen 
delight in many a morning lounge and evening reverie. 

Until within the last half century, not only the standard literature 



458 



A SKETCH OP AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. II. 



but the critical opinions of America were almost exclusively of trans- 
atlantic origin. But within that period a number of writers, endowed 
with acute perceptions and eloquent expression, as well as the requi- 
site knowledge, have arisen to elucidate the tendencies, define the 
traits, and advocate the merits of modern writers. By faithful trans- 
lations, able reviews, lectures and essays, the best characteristics of 
men of literary genius, schools of philosophy, poetry, and science 
have been rendered familiar to the cultivated minds of the nation. 
Thus Richard H. Dana has explored and interpreted, with a rare 
sympathetic intelligence, the old English drama; Andrews Norton, 
the Authenticity of the Gospels ; Richard H. Wilde, the Love and 
Madness of Tasso; Alexander H. Everett, the range of contemporary 
French and German literature ; Professor Reed, the Poetry of Words- 
worth; Norman H. Hudson, the Plays of Shakspeare; Russell 
Lowell, the Older British Poets ; and Edwin P. Whipple, the Best 
Authors of Great Britain and America. W. A. Jones, HofifmaDj 
Duykinck, and others, have also illustrated our critical literature. 

For the only critical and biographical history of literature in the 
United States, we are indebted to Rufus W. Griswold, whose two 
copious and interesting octavo volumes,* so popular at home and 
useful abroad, give an elaborate account of what has been done by 
American writers from the foundation of the country to the present; 
hour. These works are the fruit of great research, and an enthusiasm 
for native literature as rare as it is patriotic. 

The philosophic acuteness, animated and fluent diction, and thorough 
knowledge of the subjects discussed, render Mr. Whipple^s critical 
essays among the most agreeable reading of the kind. His reputa- 
tion as an eloquent and sagacious critic is now firmly established. 
Both in style and thought these critical essays are worthy of the 
times; bold without extravagance, refined yet free of dilletantism, 
manly and philosophic in sentiment, and attractive in manner. The 
most elaborate single work, however, in this department, is George 
Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature, the result of many years' 
research, and so complete and satisfactory, that the best European 
critics have recognised it a permanent authority; it is both authentic 
and tasteful; the translations are excellent, the arrangement judicious, 
and the whole performance a work of genuine scholarship. It sup- 
plies a desideratum, and is an interesting and thorough exposition of 
a subject at once curious, attractive and of general literary utility. 
James Walker and Francis Wayland, although of widely diverse 
theological opinions, are both expositors of moral philosophy, to 
which they have made valuable contributions. Henry James, of 
Albany, is the most argumentative and eloquent advocate of new 



* • The Prose Writers of America' and ' The Poets and Poetry of America.* 
Philadelphia, Carey and Hart. 



CHAP. II.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



459 



social principles in the country • and Waldo Emerson, by a certain 
quaintness of diction and boldly speculative turn of mind, has achieved 
a wide popularity. It is, however, to a peculiar verbal facility rather 
than to any philosophic genius that he owes the impression he creates. 
He is regarded as the leader of a sect, who, some years since, from 
the reaction of minds oppressed and narrowed by New England con- 
ventionalism and bigotry, and, in some instances, kindled by the 
speculations of G-erman literature, broke away from the ultra rational 
and sought freedom in the transcendental school. In the Memoirs 
of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, recently published, the movement is de- 
scribed and the principles of its disciples hinted rather than explained. 

The rise of this enthusiasm,^^ says her biographer, was as myste- 
rious as that of any form of revival ; and only they who were of 
the faith could comprehend how bright was this morning-time of a 
new hope. Transcendentalism was an assertion of the inalienable 
integrity of man, of the ordinances of Divinity in instinct. In part 
it was a reaction against Puritan orthodoxy ; in part an effect of re- 
newed study of the ancients, of Oriental Pantheists, of Plato, and 
the Alexandrians, of Plutarch's Morals, Seneca and Epictetus; in 
part the natural product of the place and time. On the somewhat 
stunted stock of Unitarianism — whose characteristic dogma was trust 
in individual reason as correlative to Supreme Wisdom, — had been 
grafted Grerman idealism as taught by masters of most various 
schools." 

Whoever turns to Emerson's ' Essays,' or to the writings of this 
transcendental sibyl (whose remarkable acquirements, moral courage, 
and tragic fate, render her name prominent among our female au- 
thors) for a system, a code, or even a set of definite principles, will 
be disappointed. The chief good thus far achieved by this class of 
thinkers has been negative ; they have emancipated many minds from 
the thraldom of local prejudices and prescriptive opinion, but have 
failed to reveal any positive and satisfactory truth unknown before. 
Emerson has an inventive fancy; he knows how to clothe truisms in 
Startling costume; he evolves beautiful or apt figures and apothegms 
that strike at first, but when contemplated, prove, as has been said, 
usually either true and not new, or new and not true. His volumes, 
however, are suggestive, tersely and often gracefully written ; they 
are thoughtful, observant, and speculative, and indicate a philosophic 
taste rather than power. As contributions to American literature, 
they have the merit of a spirit, beauty, and reflective tone previously 
almost undiscoverable in the didactic writings of the country. A 
writer of more consistency in ethics, and a sympathy with man more 
human, is Orville Dewey, whose discourses aljound in earnest appeals 
to consciousness, in a noble vindication of human nature, and a faith 
in progressive ideas, often arrayed in touching and impressive 
rhetoric. 

38* 



460 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. II. 



"We have not been wanting in excellent translators, especially of 
German literature ; our scholars and poets have admirably used their 
knowledge of the language in this regard. The first experiment was 
Bancroft's translation of Pleeren already referred to; and since then, 
some of the choicest lyrics and best philosophy of Germany have 
been given to the American public by Professor Longfellow, George 
Eipley, E. W. Emerson, John S. Dwight, S. M. Fuller, George H. 
Calvert, Rev. C. T. Brooks, W. H. Channing, F. H. Hedge, Samuel 
Osgood, and others. Dr. Mitchell, of New York, translated Sanna- 
zario's Italian poems, Mrs. Nichols the 'Promessi Sposi' of Manzoni, 
and Dr. Parsons, of Boston, has made the best metrical translations 
into English of Dante's great poem. 

The most elaborate piece of humor in our literature has been 
already mentioned — as Irving's facetious history of his native town. 
The sketch entitled ' The Stout Gentleman,' by the same genial 
author, is another inimitable attempt in miniature, as well as some 
of the papers in ^Salmagundi.' The letters of ^Jack Downing' 
may be considered an indigenous specimen in this department; and 
also the 'Charcoal Sketches' of Joseph C. Neal, the ' Ollapodiana' 
of Willis G. Clarke, the 'Puffer Hopkins' of Cornelius Matthews, 
and many scenes by Thorpe, and in Mrs. Kirkland's ' New Home.' 
The original aspects of life in the West and South, as well as those 
of Yankee Land, have also found several apt and graphic delineators; 
although the coarseness of the subjects, or the carelessness of the 
style, will seldom allow them a literary rank. 

That delightful species of literature which is neither criticism nor 
fiction — neither oratory nor history — but partakes somewhat of all 
these, and owes its charm to a felicitous blending of fact and fancy, 
of sentiment and thought — the Belles-Lettres writing of our country, 
has gradually increased as the ornamental has encroached on the 
once arbitrary domain of the useful. Among the earliest specimens 
were the 'Letters of a British Spy,' and the 'Old Bachelor' of 
William Wirt, and Tador's 'Letters on New England;' in New 
York, this sphere was gracefully illustrated by Robert C. Sands and 
Theodore S. Fay, by tale, novelette, and essay ; in Philadelphia, by 
Robert Walsh, who gleaned two volumes from his newspaper arti- 
cles; and at present, by the 'Reveries of a Bachelor' of Mitchell, 
and in a more vigorous manner in the ' St. Leger Papers ' of Kim- 
ball. Professors Frisbie, Caldwell, Henry, and others, have contri- 
buted to the taste and culture of the Belles Lettres in America.* 



* There are a few American books which cannot be strictly classified under 
either of these divisions; which not only have a sterling value, but a wide and 
established reputation ; such as the 'Legal Commentaries of Chancellor Kent,' 
the 'Dictionary' of Noah Webster, Dr. Rush's ' 7'reatise on the Philosophy 
of the Human Voice,' 'Lectures on Art,' by Washington Allston; the 
* Classical Manuals' of Professor Anthon; Dr. Bowditch's translation of the 



CHAP. II.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



461 



The literature of no country is more rich in books of travel. From 
Carter's ' Letters from Europe/ Dwight's ' Travels in New England/ 
and Lewis and Clark's ' Expedition to the Rocky Mountains/ to the 
'Yucatan' of Stephens, and the 'Two Years before the Mast^ of 
Dana, American writers have put forth a succession of animated, 
intelligent, and most agreeable records of their explorations in every 
part of the globe. In many instances, their researches have been 
directed to a special object, and resulted in positive contributions to 
natural science ; thus Audubon's travels are associated with his dis- 
coveries in ornithology, and those of Schoolcraft with his Indian lore. 
Stephens revealed to our gaze the singular and magnificent ruins of 
Central America ; Sanderson unfolded the hygiene of life in Paris ; 
Flint guided our steps through the fertile valleys of the West, and 
Irving and Hoffman brought its scenic wonders home to the coldest 
fancy.* 

" Americans are thought by foreign critics to excel as writers of 
travels; and the opinion is confirmed by the remarkable success 
which has so often attended their works. Indeed, in scarcely any 
other field of literature has the talent of this country been so gene- 
rally recognised abroad ; and this superiority appears to be a natural 
result of American life and character. With few time-honoured 
customs or strong local associations to bind him to the soil, with little 
hereditary dignity of name or position to sustain, and accustomed, 
from infancy, to witness frequent changes of position and fortune, 
the inhabitant of no civilized land has so little restraint upon his 



'Mecanique Celeste' of La Place ; the 'Ornithology' of Wilson and Audubon ; 
Catlin's and Schoolcraft's works on the Indians. The ethnological contribu- 
tions of Squier, Pickering's philological Researches, and the 'Essaj's on 
Political Economy' by Albert Gallatin, Raguet, Dr. Cooper, Tucker, Colton, 
"Wayland, Middleton, Raymond, A. H. Everett, and Henry C. Carey. Francis 
Bowen has published able lectures on metaphysical subjects. James D. Nouri:e, 
of Kentucky, has published a clever little treatise, the ' Philosophy of His- 
tory ; ' Dr. Palfrey, of Massachusetts, a series of erudite lectures on ' Jewish 
Antiquities;' J. Q. Adams a course on 'Rhetoric;' Judge Buel and Henry 
Colman valuable works on 'Agriculture,' and A. J. Downing, on 'Rural 
Architecture and Horticulture.' 

* It is difficult to enumerate the works in this department ; but among them 
may be justly commended, either for graces of style, effective description, or 
interesting narrative — and, in some instances, for all these qualities combined 
— the 'Year in Spain' of Mackenzie, the 'Winter in the West' of C. F. Hoff- 
man, the ' Oregon Trail' of Francis Parkman, the ' Pencillings by the Way' 
of Willis, the 'Scenes and Thoughts in Europe' of George H. Calvert, Long- 
fellow's 'Outre-mer,' the 'Typee' of Melville, the 'Views A-Foot' of Taylor, 
'Fresh Gleanings' by Mitchell, 'Nile-Notes' by George Curtis, Squier's 
'Nicaragua,' and the writings of this kind by Robinson, Long, BJelville, 
Jewett, Spencer, Gregg, Townsend, Fremont, Lanman, Bryant, Thorpe, 
Kendall, Wilgon, Webber, Colton, Gillespie, Headley, Dewey, Kip, Siliiuian, 
Bigelow, Ciishing, Wise, Warren, Mitchell, Cheever, Catlin, Norman, 
Wallis, Shaler, Ruschenberger, King, Brcckenridge, Kidder, Brown, Fisk, 
Lyman, the Exploring Expedition by Wilkes, the Dead Sea Expedition by 
Lynch, and the voyages of Delano, Cleveland, Coggeshall, and others. 



4G2 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. II. 



vagrant humor as a native of the United States. The American 
is by nature locomotive; he believes in change of air for health, 
change of residence for success, change of society fur improvement. 
Pioneer enterprise is a staple of our history. Not only do the eco- 
nomy of life and the extent of territory in the New World, train 
her citizens, as it were, to travel ; their temperament and taste also 
combine to make them tourists. Their existence favors quickness 
of perception, however inimical it may be to contemplative energy. 
Self-reliance leads to adventure. The freedom from prejudice inci- 
dent to a new country, gives more ample scope to observation; and 
the very freshness of life renders impressions from new scenes more 
vivid. . Thus free and inspired, it is not surprising that things often 
wear a more clear and impressive aspect to his mind, than they do to 
the jaded senses and the conventional views of more learned and 
reserved, but less flexible and genial travellers. The sympathetic 
grace of Irving, the impersonal fidelity of Stephens, the Flemish 
details of Slidell Mackenzie, the picturesque and spirited description 
of Hoffman, and the De Foe-like narratives of Melville and Dana, 
are qualities that have gained them more readers than fall to the lot 
of the herd of travellers, who have lavished on pictures of the same 
scenes more learning and finish, perhaps, but less of integrity of 
statement and naturalness of feeling/^* 

Homantic fiction, in the United States, took its rise with the pub- 
lication of ' Wieland' by Charles Brockden Brown, in 1798 ; attained 
its most complete and characteristic development in the long and 
brilliant career, as a novelist, of James Fenimore Cooper ; and is now 
represented, in its artistic excellence, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The 
parents of Brown were Philadelphia Quakers, and he was born in 
that city on the 17th of January, 1771. An invalid from infancy, 
he had the dreamy moods and roaming propensity incident to poetical 
sympathies ; after vainly attempting to interest his mind in the law, 
except in a speculative manner, he became an author, at a period 
and under circumstances which afford the best evidence that the 
vocation was ordained by his idiosyncrasy. With chiefly the encou- 
ragement of a few cultivated friends in New York to sustain him, 
with narrow means and feeble health, he earnestly pursued his lonely 
career, inspired by the enthusiasm of genius. His literary toil was 
varied, erudite, and indefatigable. He edited magazines and annual 
registers, vrrote political essays, a geography, and a treatise on archi- 
tecture, translated Volney's ' Travels in the United States,' debated 
at clubs, journalized, corresponded, made excursions, and entered 
ardently into the quiet duties of the fire-side and the family. His 
character was singularly gentle and pure; and he was beloved, even 
when not appreciated. It is by his novels, however, that Brown 



*- Characteristics of Literature, 2d series. 



CHAP. II.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



463 



aclnevecl renown. They are remarkable for intensity and snpernatu- 
ralism. His genius was eminently psychological; Grodwin is his 
English prototype. To the reader of the present day, these writings 
appear somewhat limited and sketch-like ; but when we consider the 
period of their composition, and the disadvantages under which they 
appeared, they certainly deserve to be ranked among the wonderful 
productions of the human mind. Brown delighted to analyse the 
phenomena of consciousness, to bring human nature under mystic 
or extraordinary influences, and mark the consequences. In ' Or- 
. mond,' ' Arthur Mervyn,' ' Jane Talbot,' ' Edgar Huntley,' and 
^Wieland,' we have such agencies as pestilence, somnambulism, rare 
coincidence, and ventriloquism, brought to act upon individuals of 
excitable or introspective character, and the result is often thrilling. 
The descriptions are terse and suggestive, the analysis thorough, and 
the feeling high-strung and reflective. The pioneer of American 
fiction was endowed with rare energy of conception, and a style at- 
tractive from its restrained earnestness and minute delineation. He 
died at the close of his thirty-ninth year. Had his works been as 
artistically constructed as they were profoundly conceived and inge- 
niously executed, they would have become standard. As it is, we 
recognise the rare insight and keen sensibility of the man, acknow- 
ledge his power to '^awaken terror and pity;" and lament the want 
of high finish and efiective shape visible in these early and remarka- 
ble fruits of native genius. 

The first successful novel by an American author was the ^ Spy.' 
A previous work by the same author, entitled ' Precaution,' had made 
comparatively little impression. It was strongly tinctured with an 
English flavor, in many respects imitative, and, as it afterwards ap- 
peared, written and printed under circumstances which gave little 
range to Cooper's real genius. In 1828, he published 'The Pio- 
neers.' In this and the novel immediately preceding it, a vein of 
national association was opened, an original source of romantic and 
picturesque interest revealed, and an epoch in our literature created. 
What Cooper had the bold invention to undertake, he had the firm- 
ness of purpose and the elasticity of spirit to pursue with unflinching 
zeal. Indeed his most characteristic trait was self-reliance. He 
commenced the arduous career of an author in a new country, and 
with fresh materials; at first, the tone of criticism was somewhat 
discouraging; but his appeal had been to the popular mind, and not 
to a literary clique, and the response was universal and sincere. 
From this time, he gave to the press a series of prose romances con- 
ceived with so much spirit and truth, and executed with such fidelity 
and vital power that they instantly took captive the reader. His fa- 
culty of description, and his sense of the adventurous, were the great 
sources of his triumph. Refinement of style, poetic sensibility, and 
melo-dramatic intensity, were elements that he ignored ; but when he 



4G4 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. H. 



pictured the scenes of the forest and prairie, the incidents of Indian 
warfare, the vicissitudes of border life, and the phenomena of the 
ocean and nautical experience, he displayed a familiarity with the 
subjects, a keen sympathy with the characters, and a thorough reality 
in the delineation, which at once stamped him as a writer of original 
and great capacity. It is true that in some of the requisites of the 
novelist, he was inferior to many subsequent authors in the same de- 
partment. His female characters want individuality and interest, 
and his dialogue is sometimes forced and ineflFective; but, on the 
other hand, he seized with a bold grasp the tangible and character- 
^ istic in his own land ; and not only stirred the hearts of his country- 
men with vivid pictures of colonial, revolutionary, and emigrant life, 
with the vast ocean and forest for its scenes ; but opened to the gaze 
of Europe, phases of human existence at once novel and exciting. 
The jSsherman of Norway, the merchant of Bordeaux, the scholar at 
Frankfort, and the countess of Florence, in a brief period, all hung 
with delight over Cooper's daguerreotypes of the New World, trans- 
ferred to their respective languages. This was no ordinary triumph. 
I It was a rich and legitimate fruit of American genius in letters. To 
' appreciate it we must look back upon the period when the Spy, the 
Pioneers, the Last of the Mohicans, the Pilot, the Red Eover, the 
Wept-of-the-Wish-ton-Wish, the Water Witch, and the Prairie, were 
new creations ; and remember that they first revealed America to 
Europe through a literary medium. In the opinion of some critics, 
the unity and completeness of Cooper's fame has been marred by 
those novels drawn from foreign subjects and induced by a long resi- 
dence in Europe; by his honest but injudicious attempts to reform 
his countrymen in some of their particular habits and modes of 
thought or action; and also by his persistency in issuing volume 
after volume of fiction, less directly inspired by observation, and 
comparatively devoid of interest. Whatever truth may exist in such 
a view of his course, it is to be considered that all temporary defects 
are soon forgotten in those memorials of individual genius which 
have the stamp of the author's best powers, and the recognition of 
^ the world. Leather-Stocking and Long Tom Coffin are standard 
characters ; the woodland landscapes, the sailing matches of men-of- 
war, the sea-fight, wrecks, and aboriginal heroes, depicted, as they 
are, by Cooper to the very life, and in enduring colors, will be iden- 
tified both with his name and country; and ever vindicate his claims 
to remembrance. His youth was passed in a manner admirably fitted 
to develope his special talent, and provide the resources of his subse- 
quent labors. Born in Burlington, N. J., on the 15th of September, 
1 1789, he was early removed to the borders of Otsego Lake, where 
his father. Judge Cooper, erected a homestead, afterwards inhabited 
and long occupied by the novelist. He was prepared for college by 
the Rector of St. Peter's Church, in Albany, and entered Yale in 



CHAP. II.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



465 



1802. Three years after, having proved an excellent classical student, 
and enjoyed the intimacy of several youth afterwards eminent in the 
land, he left New Haven and joined the United States Navy as a 
midshipman. After passing six years in the service, he resigned, 
married, and soon after established himself on his paternal domain, 
situated amid some of the finest scenery and rural attraction of his 
native state. Thus Cooper was early initiated into the scenes of a 
newly-settled country and a maritime life, with the benefit of aca- 
demical training, and the best social privileges. All these means of 
culture and development his active mind fully appreciated ; his 
observation never slumbered; and its fruits were industriously 
garnered. 

His nautical and Indian tales form, perhaps, the most character- 
istic portion of our literature. 'The Bravo ^ is the best of his Euro- 
pean novels; and his 'Naval History' is valuable and interesting. 
He was one of the most industrious of authors; his books of travel 
and biographical sketches are numerous, and possess great fidelity 
of detail, although not free from prejudice. Cooper represents 
the American mind in its adventurous character; he glories in de- 
lineating the ''monarch of the deck," — paints the movements of a 
ship at sea as if she were, indeed, "a thing of life;" follows an In- 
dian trail with the sagacity of a forest-king ; and leads us through 
storms, conflagration, and war with the firm, clear-sighted, and all- 
observant guidance of a master-spirit. His best scenes and characters 
are indelibly engraven on the memory. His best creations are instinct 
with nature and truth. His tone is uniformly manly, fresh, and 
vigorous. He is always thoroughly American. His style is na- 
tional; and when he died in the autumn of 1851, a voice of praise 
and regret seemed to rise all over the land, and a large and distin- 
guished assembly convened soon after, in New York, to listen to his 
eulogy — pronounced by the poet Bryant. 

Hawthorne is distinguished for the finish of his style, and the deli- 
cacy of his psychological insight. He combines the metaphysical 
talent of Brown with the refined diction of Irving. For a period of 
more than twenty years he contributed, at intervals, to annuals and 
magazines, the most exquisite fancy sketches and historical narratives, 
the merit of which was scarcely recognised by the public at large, 
although cordially praised by the discriminating few. These papers 
have been recently collected under the title of ' Twice-told Tales,' 
and 'Mosses from an Old Manse;' and, seen by the light of the 
author's present reputation, their grace, wisdom, and originality are 
now generally acknowledged. But it is through the two romances 
entitled 'The Scarlet Letter,' and 'The House of the Seven Gables,' 
that Hawthorne's eminence has been reached. They are remarkable 
at once for a highly finished and beautiful style, the most charming 
artistic skill, and intense characterization. To these intrinsic and 



466 



A SKETCH OP AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. II. 



universal claims, they add that of native scenes and subjects. Imagine 
such an anatomiser of the human heart as Balzac, transported to a 
provincial town of New England, and giving to its houses, streets, 
and histor}^, the analytical power of his genius, and we realize the 
triumph of Hawthorne. Bravely adopting familiar materials, he has 
thrown over them the light and shadow of his thoughtful mind, eli- 
citing a deep significance and a prolific beauty ; if we may use the 
expression, he is ideally true to the real. His invention is felicitous; 
his tone magnetic ; his sphere borders on the supernatural, and yet a 
chaste expression and a refined sentiment underlies his most earnest 
utterance ; he is more suggestive than dramatic. The early history 
of New England has found no such genial and vivid illustration as 
his pages afford. At all points his genius touches the interests of 
human life, now overflowing with a love of external nature as gentle 
as that of Thomson, now intent upon the quaint or characteristic in life 
with a humor as zestful as that of Lamb, now developing the horrible 
or pathetic with something of John Webster's dramatic terror, and 
again buoyant with a fantasy as aerial as Shelley's conceptions. And, 
in each instance, the staple of charming invention is adorned with the 
purest graces of style. Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, 
educated at Bowdoin College, and after having filled an office in the 
Boston custom-house, and the post-office of his native town, and lived 
a year on a community farm, is now settled in a pleasant country 
town and become an author by profession ; and one who has already 
proved his ability to create standard exemplars of American romantic 
fiction. 

" What we admire in this writer's genius is his felicity in the use 
of common materials. It is very difficult to give an imaginative scope 
to a scene or a topic which familiarity has robbed of illusion. It is 
by the association of ideas, by the halo of remembrance and the magic 
of love, that an object usually presents itself to the mind under fan- 
ciful relations. From a foreign country our native spot becomes 
picturesque ; and from the hill of manhood the valley of youth ap- 
pears romantic; but that is a peculiar and rare mental alchemy which 
can transmute the dross of the common and the immediate into gold. 
Yet so doth Hawthorne. His 'Old Apple Dealer' yet sits by the 
old South Church, and ' The Willey House' is inscribed every sum- 
mer-day by the penknives of ambitious cits. He is able to illustrate, 
by his rich invention, places and themes that are before our very eyes 
and in our daily speech. His fancy is as free of wing at the north 
end of Boston, or on Salem turnpike, as that of other poets in the 
Vale of Cashmere or amid the Isles of Greece. He does not seem 
to feel the necessity of distance either of time or space to realize his 
enchantments. He has succeeded in attaching an ethereal interest 
to home subjects, which is no small triumph. Somewhat of that 
poetic charm which Wilson has thrown over Scottish life in his 



CHAP. II.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



467 



'Lights and Shadows/ and Irving over English, in his ^Sketch 
Book/ and Lamb over metropolitan in his ^ Elia/ has Hawthorne 
cast around New England, and his tales here and there blend, as it 
were, the traits which endear these authors. His best efforts are 
those in which the human predominates. Ingenuity and moral sig- 
nificancy are finely displayed, it is true, in his allegories; but some- 
times they are coldly fanciful, and do not win the sympathies as in 
those instances where the play of the heart relieves the dim workings 
of the abstract and supernatural. Hawthorne, like all individualities, 
must be read in the appropriate mood. This secret of appreciation 
is now understood as regards Wordsworth. It is due to all genuine 
authors. To many whose mental aliment has been exciting and 
coarse, the delicacy, meek beauties and calm spirit of these writings 
will but gradually unfold themselves ; but those capable of placing 
themselves in relation with Hawthorne, will discover a native genius 
for which to be grateful and proud, and a brother whom to know is 
to love. He certainly has done much to obviate the reproach which 
a philosophical writer, not without reason has cast upon our authors, 
when he asserts their object to be to astonish rather than please."* 

There is a host of intermediate authors between the three already 
described in this sphere of literature, of various and high degrees, 
both of merit and reputation, but whose traits are chiefly analogous 
to those of the prominent writers we have surveyed. Some of them 
have ably illustrated local themes, others excelled in scenic limning, 
and a few evinced genius for characterization. Paulding, for 
instance, in Westward Ho,^ and ^ The Dutchman's Fireside,' has 
given admirable pictures of colonial life : Richard H. Dana, in the 
* Idle Man,' has two or three remarkable psychological tales \ 
Timothy Flint, James Hall, Thomas, and more recently M'Connell 
of Illinois, have written very graphic and spirited novels of Western 
Life ; John P. Kennedy of Baltimore, has embalmed Virginia life 
in the olden time in ' Swallow Barn,' and Fay that of modern New 
York ; Gilmore Simms, a prolific and vigorous novelist, in a similar 
form has embodied the traits of Southern Character and Scenery ; 
HolFman the early history of his native State ; Dr. Ilobert Bird of 
Philadelphia, those of Mexico ; William Ware has rivalled Lock- 
hart's classical romance in his ^Letters from Palmyra' and "^Probus/ 
Allston's artist-genius is luminous in Monaldi / Judd in ' Marga- 
ret' has related a tragic story arrayed in the very best hues and 
outlines of New England life ; and Edgar A. Poe, in his ' Tales of 
the Grotesque and Arabesque/ evinces a genius in which a love of 
the marvellous and an intensity of conception are united with the 
wildest sympathies, as if the endowments of Mrs. Radcliffe and 
Coleridge were partially united in one mind. In adventurous and 
descriptive narration we have Melville and Mayo. John Neal struck 



* Leaves from the Diary of a Dreamer. 

89 



468 A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. in. 

off at a heat some half-score of novels that, at least, illustrate a 
facility quite remarkable; and, indeed, from the days of the 
'Algerine Captive' and 'The Foresters' the first attempts at such 
writing in this country, to the present day, there has been no lack 
of native fictions. The minor specimens which possess the highest 
literary excellence are by Irving, Willis, and Longfellow ; but their 
claims rest entirely on style and sentiment; they are brief and 
polished, but more graceful than impressive. 



CHAPTER III. 

POETRY. 

Its essential Conditions — Freneau and the early Metrical Writers — Mumford 
— Cliffton — Allston, and others — Pierpont — Dana — Hillhouse — Sprague — 
Percival — Halleck — Drake — Hoffman — Willis — Longfellow — Holmes — 
Lowell — Boker — Favorite Single Poems — Descriptive Poetry — Street — 
Whittier, and others — Brainard — Song- Writers — Other Poets — Female 
Poets — Bryant. 

' It has been well observed by an English critic, that poetry is not 
a branch of authorship. The vain endeavor to pervert its divine 
and spontaneous agency into a literary craft, is the great secret of 
its decline. Poetry is the overflowing of the soul. It is the record 
of what is best in the world. No product of the human mind is 
more disinterested. Hence comparatively few keep the poetic ele- 
ment alive beyond the period of youth. All that is genuine in the 
art springs from vivid experience, and life seldom retains any novel 
aspect to those who have long mingled in its scenes, and staked upon 
its chances. A celebrated artist of our day, when asked the process 
by which his delineations were rendered so efiective, replied that he 
drew them altogether from memory. Natural objects were portrayed, 
not as they impressed him at the moment, but according to the 
lively and feeling phases in which they struck his senses in boyhood. 
For this reason it has been truly observed, that remembrance makes 
the poet; and, according to Wordsworth, "emotions recollected in 
tranquillity,'' form the true source of inspiration. A species of 
literature depending upon conditions so delicate, is obviously not to 
be successfully' cultivated by those who hold it in no reverence. 
The great distinction between verse-writers and poets is, that the 
former seek and the latter receive ; the one attempt to command, 
the other meekly obey the higher impulses of their being.'* 



* Thoughts on the Poets. 



CHAP. III.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



469 



The first metrical compositions in this country, recognised by 
popular sympathy, were the efiiisions of Philip Freneau, a political 
writer befriended by Jefferson. He wrote many songs and ballads 
in a patriotic and historical vein, which attracted and somewhat 
reflected the feelings of his contemporaries, and were not destitute 
of merit. Their success was owing, in part, to the immediate 
interest of the subjects; and in part to musical versification and 
pathetic sentiment. One of his Indian ballads has survived the 
general neglect to which more artistic skill and deeper significance 
in poetry, has banished the mass of his verses ; to the curious in 
metrical writings, however, they yet afford a characteristic illustra- 
tion of the taste and spirit of the times. Freneau was born in 
1752, and died in 1832. The antecedent specimens of verse in 
America, were, for the most part, the occasional work of the clergy, 
and are remarkable chiefly for a quaint and monotonous strain, gro- 
tesque rhymed versions of the Psalms, and tolerable attempts at 
descriptive poems. The writings of Mrs. Bradstreet, Grovernor 
Bradford, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, and the witty Dr. Byles, 
in this department, are now only familiar to the antiquarian. 
Franklin's friend Ealph, and Thomas Godfrey of Philadelphia, 
indicate the dawn of a more liberal era, illustrated by Trumbull, 
Dwight, Humphreys, Alsop, and Honeywood ; passages from whose 
poems show a marked improvement in diction, a more refined 
scholarship, and genuine sympathy with nature ; hut, although in a 
literary point of view they are respectable performances, and for the 
period and locality of their composition, suggestive of a rare degree 
of taste, there are too few salient points, and too little of an original 
spirit, to justify any claim to high poetical genius. One of the 
most remarkable efi'orts in this branch of letters, at the epoch in 
question, was doubtless William Mumford's translation of the Iliad 
— a work that, when published, elicited some authentic critical 
praise. He was a native of Virginia, and his great undertaking 
was only finished a short period before his death, which occurred in 
1825. The verses which have the earliest touch of true sensibility 
and that melody of rhythm which seems intuitive, are the few 
bequeathed by William Cliffton of Philadelphia, born in 1772. 
After him we trace the American muse in the patriotic songs of 
K. T. Paine, and the scenic descriptions of Paulding, until she began 
a loftier though brief flight in the fanciful poems of Allston. 

" In the moral economy of life, sensibility to the beautiful must 
have a great purpose. If the Platonic doctrine of pre-existence be 
true, perhaps ideality is the surviving element of our primal life. 
Some individuals seem born to minister to this influence, which, 
under the name of beaut}^, sentiment, or poetry, is the source of 
what is most exalting in our inmost experience and redeeming in 
our outward life. Does not a benign Providence watch over these 



470 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. III. 



priests of nature? They are not necessarily renowned. Their 
agency may be wholly social and private, yet none the less efficient. 
We confess that, to us, few arguments for the benevolent and infinite 
design of existence are more impressive than the fact that such 
beings actually live, and wholly unfitted as they are to excel in or 
even conform to the Practical, bear evidence, not to be disputed, of 
the sanctity, the tranquil progress and the serene faith that dwell 
in the Ideal. Washington Allston was such a man. He was born 
in South Carolina in 1779, and died at Cambridge, Mass., in 1843. 
By profession he was a painter, and his works overflow with genius ; 
still it would be difficult to say whether his pen, his pencil, or his 
tongue chiefly made known that he was a prophet of tke true and 
beautiful. He believed not in any exclusive development. It was 
the spirit of a man, and not his dexterity or success, by which he 
tested character. In painting, reading, or writing, his mornings 
were occupied, and at night he was at the service of his friends. 
Beneath his humble roof, in his latter years, there was often a flow 
of wit, a community of mind, and a generous exercise of sympathy 
which kings might envy. To the eye of the multitude his life 
glided away in secluded contentment, yet a prevailing idea was the 
star of his being — the idea of beauty. For the high, the lovely, 
the perfect, he strove all his days. He sought them in the scenes 
of nature, in the master-pieces of literature and art, in habits of 
life, in social relations, and in love. Without pretence, without 
elation, in all meekness, his youthful enthusiasm chastened by 
suffering, he lived above the world. Gentleness he deemed true 
wisdom, renunciation of all the trappings of life, a duty. He was 
calm, patient, occasionally sad, but for the most part happy in the 
free exercise and guardianship of his varied powers. His sonnets 
are interesting as records of personal feeling. They eloquently 
breathe sentiments of intelligent admiration or sincere friendship ; 
while the ^Styles of the Season' and other longer poems show a 
great command of language and an exuberant fancy. 

On his return to America, the life of our illustrious painter was 
one of comparative seclusion. The state of his health, devotion to 
his art, and a distaste for promiscuous society and the bustle of the 
world, rendered this course the most judicious he could have 
pursued. His humble retirement was occasionally invaded by 
foreigners of distinction, to whom his name had become precious; 
and sometimes a votary of letters or art entered his dwelling, to 
gratify admiration or seek counsel and encouragement. To such, 
an unaffected and sincere welcome was always given, and they left 
his presence refreshed and happy. The instances of timely sympa- 
thy which he afforded young and baffled aspirants, are innumerable. 

Allston's appearance and manners accorded perfectly with his 
character. His form was slight and his movements quietly active. 



CHAP, ni.] A SKETCH OF A^.IERICAN LITERATURE. 



471 



The lines of his countenance, the breadth of the brow, the large 
and speaking eye, and the long white hair, made him an immediate 
object of interest. If not engaged in conversation, there was a 
serene abstraction in his air. When death so tranquilly overtook 
him, for many hours it was difficult to believe that he was not 
sleeping, so perfectly did the usual expression remain. His torch' 
light burial harmonized, in its beautiful solemnity, with the bright 
and thoughtful tenor of his life.'^'^ 

John Pierpont, a Unitarian clergyman of Massachusetts, has 
written numerous hymns and odes for religious and national occa- 
sions, remarkable for their variety of difficult metres, and for the 
felicity both of the rhythm, sentiment, and expression. His ' Airs 
of Palestine,' a long poem in heroic verse, has many eloquent pas- 
sages; and several of his minor pieces, especially those entitled 
' Passing Away/ and ' My Child,' are striking examples of effective 
versification. The most popular of his occasional poems is 'The 
Pilgrim Fathers,' an ode written for the anniversary of the landing 
at Plymouth, and embodying in truly musical verse the sentiment 
of the memorable day. 

Kichard H. Dana is the most psychological of American poets. 
His ' Buccaneer ' has several descriptive passages of singular terse- 
ness and beauty; although there is a certain abruptness in the metre 
chosen. The scenery and phenomena of the ocean are evidently 
familiar to his observation ; the tragic and remorseful elements in 
humanity exert a powerful influence over his imagination ; while the 
mysteries and aspirations of the human soul fill and elevate his mind. 
The result is an introspective tone, a solemnity of mood lightened 
occasionally by touches of pathos or beautiful pictures. There is a 
compactness, a pointed truth to the actual, in many of his rhymed 
pieces, and a high music in some of his blank verse, which suggest 
greater poetical genius than is actually exhibited. His taste evi- 
dently inclines to Shakspeare, Milton, and the old English dramatists, 
his deep appreciation of whom he has manifested in the most subtle 
and profound criticisms. Of his minor pieces, the ' Intimations of 
Immortality' and 'The Little Beach-Bird,' are perhaps the most 
characteristic of his two phases of expression. 

James A. Hillhouse excelled in a species of poetic literature, 
which, within a few years, has attained eminence from the fine illus- 
trations of Taylor, Browning, Horne, Talfourd, and other men of 
genius in England. It may be called the written drama; and how- 
ever unfit for representation, is unsurpassed for bold, noble, and 
exquisite sentiment and imagery. The name of Hillhouse is associated 
with the beautiful elms of New Haven, beneath whose majestic 
boughs he so often walked. His home in the neighborhood of this 



* Artist- Life, or Sketches of American Painters, 

39* 



472 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. III. 



rural city was consecrated by elevated tastes, and domestic virtue. 
He there, in the intervals of business, led the life of a true scholar; 
and the memorials of this existence are his poems ' Hadad,' ' The 
Judgment/ 'Percy's Masque,' ' Demetria/ and others. In the two 
former, his scriptural erudition and deep perceptions of the Jewish 
character, and his sense of religious truth, are evinced in the most 
carefully finished, and nobly-conceived writings. Their tone is lofty, 
often sublime; the language is finely chosen, and there is about them 
evidence of gradual and patient labor rare in American literature. 
On every page we recognise the Christian scholar and gentleman, 
the secluded bard, and the chivalric student of the past. ' Percy's 
Masque' re-produces the features of an era more impressed with 
knightly character than any in the annals of England. Hillhouse 
moves in that atmosphere quite as gracefully as among the solemn 
and venerable traditions of the Hebrew faith. His dramatic and 
other pieces are the first instances, in this country, of artistic skill 
in the higher and more elaborate spheres of poetic writing. He 
possessed the scholarship, the leisure, the dignity of taste, and the 
noble sympathy requisite thus to " build the lofty rhyme ; " and his 
volumes, though unattractive to the mass of readers, have a perma- 
nent interest and value to the refined, the aspiring, and the disci- 
plined mind. 

Charles Sprague has been called the Rogers of America; and 
there is an analogy between them in two respects, — the careful finish 
of their verses, and their financial occupation. The American poet 
first attracted notice by two or three theatrical prize addresses; and 
his success, in this regard, attained its climax in a 'Shakspeare Ode' 
which grouped the characters of the great poet with an efiect so 
striking and happy, and in a rhythm so appropriate and impressive, 
as to recall the best efforts of Collins and Dryden united. A similar 
?femposition, more elaborate, is his ode delivered on the second cen- 
tennial anniversary of the settlement of Boston, his native city. A 
few domestic pieces, remarkable for their simplicity of expression 
and truth of feeling, soon became endeared to a large circle ; but the 
performance which has rendered Sprague best known to the country 
as a poet, is his metrical essay on ' Curiosity,' delivered in 1829 
before the literary societies of Harvard University. It is written in 
heroic measure, and recalls the couplets of Pope. The choice of a 
theme was singularly fortunate. He traces the passion which 
^'tempted Eve to sin" through its loftiest and most vulgar mani- 
festations ; at one moment, rivalling Crabbe in the lowliness of his 
details, and at another, Campbell in the aspiration of his song. The 
serious and the comic alternate on every page. Grood sense is the 
basis of the work ; fancy, wit, and feeling, warm and vivify it, and a 
nervous tone and finished versification, as well as excellent choice of 
•words, impart a glow, polish, and grace, that at once gratify the ear, 
and captivate the mind. 



CHAP, ni.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



473 



James G-. Percival has been a copious writer of verses, some of 
which, from their even and sweet flow, their aptness of epithet and 
natural sentiment, have become household and school treasures ; 
such as 'The Coral Grove/ 'New England,' and 'Seneca Lake.' 
His command both of language and metre is remarkable; his ac- 
quirements have been very extensive and various, and his life eccen- 
tric. Perhaps a remarkable power of expression has tended to limit 
his poetic fame, bj inducing a difluse, careless, and unindividual 
method ; although choice pieces enough may easily be gleaned from 
his voluminous writings, to constitute a just and rare claim to renown 
and sympathy. 

The poems of Fitz-G-reene Halleck, although limited in quantity, 
are perhaps the best known and most cherished, especially in the 
latitude of New York, of all American verses. This is owing, in 
no small degree, to their spirited, direct, and intelligible character; 
the absence of all vagueness and mysticism, and the heartfelt or 
humorous glow of real inspiration; and in a measure, perhaps, it can 
be traced to the prestige of his youthful fame, when, associated with 
his friend Drake, he used to charm the town with the admirable local 
verses that appeared in the journals of the day, under the signature 
of Croaker and Co. His theory of poetic expression is that of the 
most popular masters of English verse — manly, clear, vivid, warm 
with genuine emotion, or sparkling with true wit. The more recent 
style of metrical writing, suggestive rather than emphatic, undefined 
and involved^ and borrowed mainly from German idealism, he utterly 
repudiates. All his verses have a vital meaning, and the clear ring 
of pure metal. They are few but memorable. The school-boy, and 
the old Knickerbocker, both know them by heart. In his serious 
poems, he belongs to the same school as Campbell; and in his lighter 
pieces reminds us of Beppo and the best parts of Don Juan. 
' Fanny,' conceived in the latter vein, has the point of a fine local 
satire gracefully executed. 'Burns' and the lines on the death of 
Drake, have the beautiful irapressiveness of the highest elegiac verse. 
'Marco Bozzaris' is perhaps the best martial lyric in the language; 
'Red Jacket' the most effective Indian portrait; and 'Twilight' an 
apt piece of contemplative verse; while 'Alnwick Castle' combines 
his grave and gay style with inimitable art and admirable effect. As 
a versifier, he is an adept in that relation of sound to sense which 
embalms thought in deathless melody. An unusual blending of the 
animal and intellectual with that full proportion essential to manhood, 
enables him to utter appeals that wake responses in the universal 
heart. An almost provoking mixture of irony and sentiment is 
chai'acteristic of his genius. Born in Connecticut, his life has been 
chiefly passed in the city of New York, and occupied in mercantile 
affairs. He is a ponservative in taste and opinions, but his feelings 
are chivalric; and his sympathies ardent and loyal; and these, alt^r- 



474 A SKETCH Oi' AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. III. 

Dating with, humor, glow and sparkle in the most spirited and har- 
monious lyrical compositions of the American muse. 

" Centuries hence, perchance, some lover of '■ The Old American 
Writers' will speculate as ardently as Monkbarns himself, about the 
site of Sleepy Hollow. Then the Hudson will possess a classic 
interest, and the associations of genius and patriotism may furnish 
themes to illustrate its matchless scenery. ' The Culprit Fay ' will 
then be quoted with enthusiasm. Imagination is a perverse faculty. 
Why should the ruins of a feudal castle add enchantment to a knoll 
of the Catskills ? Are not the Palisades more ancient than the 
aqueducts of the Roman Campagna? Can bloody tradition or 
superstitious legends really enhance the picturesque impression de- 
rived from West Point? The heart for ever asserts its claim. 
Primeval nature is often coldly grand in the view of one who loves 
and honors his race ; and the outward world is only brought near to 
his spirit when linked with human love and suffering, or consecrated 
by heroism and faith. Yet, if there ever was a stream romantic in 
itself, superior from its own wild beauty, to all extraneous charms, 
it is the Hudson. Who ever sailed between its banks and scanned 
its jutting headlands, — the perpendicular cliffs, — the meadows over 
which alternate sunshine and cloud, — umbrageous woods, masses of 
grey rock, dark cedar groves, bright grain-fields, tasteful cottages, 
and fairy-like sails; who, after thus feasting both sense and soul, 
through a summer day, has, from a secluded nook of those beautiful 
shores, watched the moon rise and tip the crystal ripples with light, 
and not echoed the appeal of the bard ? 

'Tell me — where'er thy silver bark be steering, 

By bright Italian or soft Persian lands, 
Or o'er those island-studded seas careering, 

Whose pearl-charged waves dissolve on coral strands: 
Tell if thou visitest, thou heavenly rover, 
A lovelier scene than this the wide world over?'* 

It was where 

* The moon looks down on old Cro'nest, 
^ And mellows the shade on his shaggy breast,' 

that Drake laid the scene of his poem. The story is of simple con- 
struction. The fairies are called together, at this chosen hour, not 
to join in dance or revel, but to sit in judgment on one of their 
number who has broken his vestal vow. Evil sprites, both of the 
air and water, oppose the Fay in his mission of penance. He is 
sadly baffled and tempted, but at length conquers all difficulties, and 
his triumphant return is hailed with ^ dance and song, and lute and 
lyre.' 

" It is in the imagery of the poem that Drake's genius is pre-emi- 



* Hoffman's " Moonlight on the Hudson." 



CHAP. III.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



475 



nent. What, for instance, can be more ingenious than the ordeals 
prescribed had any 'spot or taint' in his ladje-love deepened the 
Fay's sacrilege ? Most appropriate tortures, these, for a fairy inqui- 
sition ! Even without the metrical accompaniment, how daintily 
conceived are all the appointments of the fairies ! Their lanterns 
were owlet's eyes. Some of them repose in cobweb hammocks, 
swinging, perhaps, on tufted spears of grass, and rocked by the 
zephyrs of a midsummer night. Others make their beds of lichen- 
green, pillowed by the breast-plumes of the humming-bird. A few, 
whose taste for upholstery is quite magnificent, find a couch in the 
purple shade of the four-o'clock, or the little niches of rock lined 
with dazzling mica. The table of these minnikin epicureans is a 
mushroom, whose velvet surface and quaker hue make it a very 
respectable festal board at which to drink dew from buttercups. The 
king's throne is of sassafras and spice-wood, with tortoise-shell pillars, 
and crimson tulip-leaves for drapery. But the quaint shifts and 
beautiful outfit of the Culprit himself, comprise the most delectable 
imagery of the poem. He is worn out with fatigue and chagrin at 
the very commencement of his journey, and therefore makes captive 
of a spotted toad, by way of a steed. Having bridled her with silk- 
weed twist, his progress is rapid by dint of lashing her sides with an 
osier thong. Arrived at the beach, he launches fearlessly upon the 
tide, for among his other accomplishments, the Fay is a graceful 
swimmer; but his tender limbs are so bruised by leeches, star-fish, 
and other watery enemies, that he is soon driven back. 

"The materia medica of Fairy-land is always accessible; and cob- 
web lint, and balsam dew of sorrel and henbane, speedily relieve the 
little penitent's wounds. Having refreshed himself with the juice 
of the calamus root, he returns to the shore, and selects a neatly- 
shaped muscle shell, brightly painted without, and tinged with pearl 
within. Nature seemed to have formed it expressly for a fairy-boat. 
Having notched the stern, and gathered a colen bell to bale with, he 
sculls into the midst of the river, laughing at his old foes as they 
grin and chatter around his way. There, in the sweet moon-light, 
he sits until a sturgeon comes by, and leaps, all glistening, into the 
silvery atmosphere; then balancing his delicate frame upon one foot, 
like a Lilliputian Mercury, he lifts the flowery cup, and catches the 
one sparkling drop that is to wash the stain from his wing. Gray is 
his return voyage. Sweet nymphs clasp the boat's side with their 
tiny hands, and cheerily urge it onward. His next enterprise is of 
a more knightly species ; and he proceeds to array himself accord- 
ingly, as becomes a fairy cavalier. His acorn helmet is plumed with 
thistle-down, a bee's nest forms his corselet, and his cloak is of but- 
terflies' wings. With a lady-bug's shell for a shield, and wasp-sting 
lance, spurs of cockle-seed, a bow made of vine-twig, strung with 
muize-silk, and well supplied with nettle-shafts, he mounts his fire-fly 



476 A SKETCH OP AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. III. 

Bucephalus, and waving his blade of blue grass, speeds upward to 
catch a ^glimmering spark' from some flying meteor. Again the 
spirits of evil are let loose upon him, and the upper elements are not 
more friendly than those below. Fays are as hardly beset, it seems, 
as we of coarser clay, by temptations in a feminine shape. A sylphid 
queen of the skies, Uhe loveliest of the forms of light,' enchants 
the wanderer by her beauty and kindness. But though she played 
very archly with the butterfly cloak, and handled the tassel of his 
blade while he revealed to her pitying ear 'the dangers he had 
passed,' the memory of his first love and the object of pilgrimage 
kept his heart free. Escorted with great honor by the sylph's lovely 
train, his career is resumed, and his flame-wood lamp at length re- 
kindled, and before the 'sentry elf proclaims 'a streak in the 
eastern sky,' the Culprit has been welcomed to all his original glory. 

''It will be observed that the materials — the costume, as it were — 
of this fairy tale, are of native and familiar origin. The elFect is 
certainly quite as felicitous as that of many similar productions where 
the countless flowers and rich legends of the East, furnish the poet 
with an exhaustless mine of pleasing images. It has been remarked 
that the dolphin and flying-fish are the only poetical members of the 
finny tribes ; but who, after reading the Culprit Fay, will ever hear 
the plash of a sturgeon in the moon-lit water, without recalling the 
genius of Drake ? Indeed, the poem which we have thus cursorily 
examined, is one of those happy inventions of fancy, superinduced 
upon fact, which afibrd unalloyed delight. There are various tastes 
as regard the style and spirit of 'difi'erent bards ; but no one, having 
the slightest perception, will fail to realize at once that the Culprit 
Fay is a genuine poem. This is, perhaps, the highest of praise. 
The mass of versified compositions are not strictly poems. Here and 
there only the purely ideal is apparent. A series of poetical frag- 
ments are linked by rhymes to other and larger portions of common- 
place and prosaic ideas. It is with the former as with moon-beams 
falling through dense foliage — they only chequer our path with light. 
'Poetry,' says Campbell, 'should come to us in masses of ore, that 
require little sifting.' The poem before us obeys this important 
rule. It is 'of imagination all compact.' It takes us completely 
away from the dull level of ordinary associations. As the portico of 
some beautiful temple, through it we are introduced into a scene of 
calm delight, where Fancy asserts her joyous supremacy, and woos 
us to forgetfulness of all outward evil, and to fresh recognition of the 
lovely in Nature, and the graceful and gifted in humanity."* 

For some of the best convivial, amatory, and descriptive poetry of 
native origin, we are indebted to Charles Fenno Hoffman. The 
woods and streams, the feast and the vigil, are reflected in his verse 
with a graphic truth and sentiment that evidence an eye for the pic- 



* 'Ihoughts on the Poets. 



CHAP. III.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



477 



turesque, a sense of the adventurous, and a zest for pleasure. He 
has written many admirable scenic pieces that evince not only a careful, 
but a loving observation of nature; some touches of this kind in the 
' Vigil of Faith' are worthy of the most celebrated poets. Many of his 
songs, from their graceful flow and tender feeling, are highly popular, 
although some of the metres are too like those of Moore not to pro- 
voke a comparison. They are, however, less tinctm-ed with artifice ; 
and many of them have a spontaneous and natural vitality. 

The Scripture pieces of N. P. Willis, although the productions of 
his youth, have an individual beauty that renders them choice and 
valuable exemplars of American genius. In his other poems there 
is apparent a sense of the beautiful and a grace of utterance, often an 
exquisite imagery, and rich tone of feeling that emphatically announce 
the poet ; but in the chastened and sweet, as well as picturesque ela- 
boration of the miracles of Christ, and some of the incidents recorded 
in the Bible, Willis succeeded in an experiment at once bold, delicate, 
and profoundly interesting. ' Melanie ^ is a narrative in verse, full 
of imaginative beauty and expressive music. The high finish, rare 
metaphors, verbal felicity, and graceful sentiment of his poems are 
sometimes marred by a doubtful taste that seems affectation; but 
where he obeys the inspiration of nature and religious sentiment, the 
result is truly beautiful. A native of Maine, he has been an exten- 
sive traveller, and has gathered his illustrations from a wide range of 
observation and experience. 

Henry W. Longfellow has achieved an extended reputation as a 
poet, for which he is chiefly indebted to his philological aptitudes and 
his refined taste? Trained as a verbal artist by the discipline of a 
poetical translator, he acquired a tact and facility in the use of words, 
which great natural fluency and extreme fastidiousness enabled him 
to use to the utmost advantage. His poems are chiefly meditative, 
and have that legendary significance peculiar to the German ballad. 
They also often embody and illustrate a moral truth. There is little 
or no evidence of inspiration in his verse, as that term is used to 
suggest the power of an overmastering passion; but there is a thought- 
ful, subdued feeling that seems to overflow in quiet beauty. It is, 
however, the manner in which this sentiment is expressed, the appo- 
siteness of the figures, the harmony of the numbers, and the inimi- 
table choice of words that gives effect to the composition. He often 
reminds us of an excellent mosaic worker, with his smooth table of 
polished marble indented to receive the precious stones that are lying 
at hand, which he calmly, patiently, and with exquisite art, inserts 
in the shape of flowers and fruit. Almost all Longfellow's poems 
are gems set with consummate taste. His ' Evangeline ' is a beau- 
tiful picture of rural life and love, which, from the charm of its pic- 
tures and the gentle harmony of its sentiment, became popular 
although written in hexameters. His ' Skeleton in Armor ' is the 
most novel and characteristic of his shorter poems ; and his ' Psalms 



478 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. in. 



of Life ' and ' Excelsior ' are the most familiar and endeared. He is 
the artistic, as Halleck is the lyrical and Bryant the picturesque and 
philosophic, of American poets. 

The most concise, apt, and eiFective poet of the school of Pope, this 
country has produced, is Oliver Wendell Holmes, a Boston physician 
and son of the excellent author of the 'Annals,' long a minister of the 
parish of Cambridge, at which venerable seat of learning this ac- 
complished writer was born. His best lines are a series of rhymed 
pictures, witticisms, or sentiments, let off with the precision and bril- 
liancy of the scintillations that sometimes illumine the northern 
horizon. The significant terms, the perfect construction and acute 
choice of syllables and emphasis, render some passages of Holmes 
absolute models of versification, especially in the heroic measure. 
Besides these artistic merits, his poetry abounds with fine satire, 
beautiful delineations of nature, and amusing caricatures of manners. 
The long poems are metrical essays more pointed, musical, and judi- 
cious, as well as witty, than any that have appeared, of the same 
species, since the ' Essay on Man' and ' The Dunciad.' His descrip- 
tion of the art in which he excels, is inimitable, and illustrates all 
that it defines. His 'Old Ironsides' — an indignant protest against 
the destruction of the frigate Constitution — created a public senti- 
ment that prevented the fulfilment of that ungracious design. His 
verses on ' Lending an old Punch Bowl' are in the happiest vein of that 
form of writing. About his occasional pieces, there is an easy and 
vigorous tone like that of Praed ; and some of them are the liveliest 
specimens of finished verse yet written among us. His command of 
language, his ready wit, his concise and pointed style, the nervous, 
bright, and wise scope of his muse, now and then softened by a pa- 
thetic touch, or animated by a living picture, are qualities that have 
firmly established the reputation of Dr. Holmes as a poet; while, in 
professional character and success, he has been equally recognised. 

J ames B. Lowell, also the son of a clergyman and a native of Cam- 
bridge, unites, in his most efiective poems, the dreamy, suggestive 
character of the transcendental bards with the philosophic simplicity 
of Wordsworth. He has written clever satires, good sonnets, and 
some long poems with fine descriptive passages. He reminds us 
often of Tennyson, in the sentiment and the construction of his verse. 
Imagination and philanthropy are the dominant elements in his 
writings ; some of which are marked by a graceful flow and earnest 
tone, and many unite with these attractions that of high finish. 

George H. Boker, the author of 'Calaynos,' 'Anne Boleyn,' and 
other dramatic pieces, is a native and resident of Philadelphia. "The 
glow of his images is chastened by a noble simplicity, keeping them 
within the line of human sympathy and natural expression. He has 
followed the masters of dramatic writing with rare judgment. He 
also excels many gifted poets of his class in a quality essential to an 



CHAP. III.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, 



47-9 



acted play — spirit. To the tragic ability be unites aptitude for easy, 
colloquial, and jocose dialogue, such as must intervene in the genuine 
Shakspearian drama, to give relief and additional elFect to high emotion. 
His language, also, rises often to the highest point of energy, pathos, 
and beauty.""^ 

A casual dalliance Tvith the muses is characteristic of our busy 
citizens, in all professions ; some of these poetical estrays have a per- 
manent hold upon the popular taste and sympathy. Among them 
may be mentioned Frisbie's 'Castle in the Air,' Norton's 'Scene after 
a Summer Shower,' Henry Ware's 'Address to the Ursa Major,' 
Pinkney's verses entitled 'A Health,' Palmer's ode to 'Light,' Poe's 
* Raven' and 'The Bells,' Cooke's ' Florence Yane,' Parson's 'Lines 
to a Bust of Dante,' Wilde's ' 3Iy Life is like a Summer Kose,' 
Albert G-. Grreene's ' Old Grimes,' and Woodworth's ' Old Oaken 
Bucket.' 

Extensive circulation is seldom to be hoped for works which 
appeal so faintly to the practical spirit of our times and people, as 
the class we have thus cursorily examined. Yet, did space allow, 
we should be tempted into a somewhat elaborate argument, to prove 
that the cordial reception of such books agrees perfectly with 
genuine utilitarianism. As a people, it is generally conceded that 
we lack nationality of feeling. Narrow reasoners may think that 
this spirit is best promoted by absurd sensitiveness to foreign com- 
ments or testy alertness in regard to what is called national honor. 
We incline to the opinion founded on well established facts, both of 
history and human nature, that the best way to make an individual 
true to his political obligations, is to promote his love of country; 
and experience shows that this is mainly induced by cherishing 
high and interesting associations in relation to his native land. 
Every well-recorded act, honorable to the state, every noble deed 
consecrated by the effective pen of the historian, or illustrated in 
the glowing page of the novelist, tends wonderfully to such a result. 
Have not the hearts of the Scotch nurtured a deeper patriotism since 
Sir AValter cast into the furrows of time his peerless romances ? No 
light part in this elevated mission is accorded to the poet. Dante 
and Petrarch have done much to render Italy beloved. Beranger 
has given no inadequate expression to those feelings which bind 
soldier, artisan and peasant to the soil of France. Here the bard 
can draw only upon brief chronicles, but G-od has arrayed this 
continent with a sublime and characteristic beauty, that should 
endear its mountains and streams to the American heart ; and who- 
ever ably depicts the natural glory of the country, touches a chord 
which should yield responses of admiration and loyalty. In this 
point of view alone, then, we deem the minstrel who ardently sings 



* Characteristics of Literature. Second Series. 

40 



480 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. III. 



of forest and sky, river and highland, as eminently worthy of re- 
cognition. This merit may be claimed for Alfred B. Street, of 
Albany, who was born and reared amid the most picturesque scenery 
of the state of New York. That he is deficient occasionally in 
high finish — that there is repetition and monotony in his strain — 
that there are redundant epithets, and a lack of variety in his 
effusions, is undeniable ; and having frankly granted all this to the 
critics, we feel at liberty to utter his just praise with equal sincerity. 
Street has an eye for Nature in all her moods. He has not roamed 
the woodlands in vain, nor have the changeful seasons passed him 
by without leaving vivid and lasting impressions. These his verse 
records with unusual fidelity and genuine emotion. I have wandered 
with him on a summer's afternoon, in the neighbourhood of his 
present residence, and, stretched upon the greensward, listened to his 
woodland talk, and can therefore testify that he observes con amove 
the play of shadows, the twinkle of swaying herbage in the sun- 
shine, and all the phenomena that makes the outward world so rich 
in meaning to the attentive gaze. He is a true Flemish painter, 
seizing upon objects in all their verisimilitude. As we read him, 
wild flowers peer up from among the brown leaves ; the drum of the 
partridge, the ripple of waters, the flickering of autumn light, the 
sting of sleety snow, the cry of the panther, the roar of the winds, 
the melody of birds, and the odor of crushed pine boughs, are 
present to our senses. In a foreign land his poems would transport 
us at once to home. He is no second-hand limner, content to 
furnish insipid copies, but draws from reality. His pictures have 
the freshness of originals. They are graphic, detailed, never untrue, 
and often vigorous. He is essentially an American poet. His 
range is limited, and he has had the good sense not to wander from 
his sphere, candidly acknowledging that the heart of man has not 
furnished him the food for meditation, which inspires a higher class 
of poets. He is emphatically an observer. In England we notice 
that these qualities have been recognised. His 'Lost Hunter' has 
been finely illustrated there, thus affording the best evidence of the 
picturesque fertility of his muse. Many of his pieces also glow 
with patriotism. His ' (xrey Forest Eagle' is a noble lyric, full of 
spirit; his 'Forest Scenes' are minutely, and at the same time, 
elaborately true. His Indian legends and descriptions of the 
seasons have a native zest we have rarely encountered. Without 
the classic refinement of Thomson, he excels him in graphic power. 
There is nothing metaphysical in his tone of mind, or highly 
artistic in his style. But there is an honest directness and cordial 
faithfulness about him that strikes us as remarkably appropriate and 
manly. Delicacy, sentiment, ideal enthusiasm, are not his by nature, 
but clear, bold, genial insight and feeling he possesses in a rare 
degree, and his poems worthily depict the phases of nature, as she 



CHAP. III.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



481 



displays herself in this land, in all her picturesque wildness, solemn 
magnificence, and serene beauty. 

To the descriptive talent as related to natural scenery, which we 
have noted as the gift of our best poets, John Gr. Whittier unites 
the enthusiasm of a reformer and the sympathies of the patriot. 
There is a prophetic anathema and a bard-like invocation in some of 
his pieces. He is a true son of New England, and, beneath the 
calm, fraternal bearing of the quaker, nurses the imaginative ardor 
of a devotee both of nature and humanity. The early promise of 
Brainard, his fine poetic observation and sensibility, enshrined in 
several pleasing lyrics, and his premature death, are analogous to 
the career of Henry Kirke White. John Neal has written some 
odes, carelessly put together, but having memorable passages. 
Emerson has published a small volume of quaint rhymes ; Croswell 
wrote several short but impressive church poems, in which he has 
been ably followed by Cleveland Cox ; Bayard Taylor's California 
ballads are full of truth, spirit, and melody; Albert Pike of 
Arkansas, is the author of a series of hymns to the gods, after the 
manner of Keats, which have justly commanded favorable notice ; 
Willis Gr. Clarke is remembered for his few but touching and 
finished elegiac pieces. Epes Sargent's ^ Poems of the Sea,' are 
worthy of the subject, both in sentiment and style. F. S. Key of 
Baltimore was the author of the ' Star-Spangled Banner,' and Judge 
Hopkinson of Philadelphia, wrote 'Hail Columbia.' G-eorge P. 
Morris, among the honored contributors to American poetry,* whose 
pieces are more or less familiar, is recognised as the song-writer of 
America. 

A large number of graceful versifiers, and a few writers of 
poetical genius, have arisen among the women of America 
Southey has recorded, in no measured terms, his estimation of Mrs. 
Brooks, the author of ' Zophiel.' The sentiment and melody of 
Mrs. Welby have made the name of 'Amelia' precious in the west. 
Mrs. Sigourney's metrical writings are cherished by a large portion 
of the New England religious public. The ' Sinless Child of Mrs. 
Oakes Smith is a melodious and imaginative poem, with many verses 
of graphic and metaphysical significance. The occasional pieces of 
Mrs. Embury, Mrs. Whitman, Mrs. Hewitt, and Miss Lynch, are 

* Among them are Hill, Godwin, Meilen, Griffin, Ware, Doane, Colton, 
Rockwell, Sanford, Ward, Gallagher, Aldrich, J. F. Clark, Hormer, Burleigh, 
Noble, Hirst, Read, Matthews, Lord, Wallace, Legare, Miller, Walter, East- 
burn, Barker, Schoolcraft, Tappan, Jackson, Meek, Seba Smith, Thacher, 
Peabody, Ellery, Channing, Snelling, Murray, Fay, C. C. Moore, J. G. 
Brooks, A. G. Greene, Bethune, Carlos Wilcox, Frisbie, Goodrich, Clason, 
Leggett, Fairfield, Dawes, Bright, Conrad, Prentice, Sinims, John H. Bryant, 
Lawrence, Benjamin, Vesy, Cutter, Cranch, Peabodie, Matthews, Hunting- 
ton. Saxe, Dewey, Fields, Hoyt, Stoddard. For biographical notices and a 
critical estimate of these metrical writers, with specimens of their verse, the 
reader is referred to Griswold's ' Poets and Poetry of America,' last edition. 



482 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. III. 



thouglitful, earnest, and artistic. The facility, playfulness, and 
ingenious conception of Mrs. Osgood rendered her a truly gifted 
improvisatrice. Miss Grould has written several pretty fanciful 
little poems, and Miss Sara Clark's 'Ariadne' is worthy of Mrs. 
Norton. The Davidsons are instances of rare, though melancholy 
precocity in the art. The moral purity, love of nature, domestic 
affection, and graceful expression which characterize the writings of 
our female poets, are remarkable. Many of them enjoy a high 
local reputation, and their effusions are quoted with zeal at the fire- 
side. Taste rather than profound sympathies, sentiment rather than 
passion, and fancy more than imagination, are evident in these spon- 
taneous, gentle, and often picturesque poems. They usually are 
more creditable to the refinement and pure feelings, than to the 
creative power or original style of the authors. Among a reading 
people, however, like our own, these beautiful native flowers, 
scattered by loving hands, are sweet mementoes and tokens of ideal 
culture and gentle enthusiasm, in delightful contrast to the prevailing 
hardihood and materialism of character.* 

In the felicitous use of native materials, as well as in the religious 
sentiment and love of freedom, united with skill as an artist, William 
Cullen Bryant is recognised as the best representative of American 
poetry ; and we cannot better close this brief survey of native litera- 
ture than by an examination of his poems ; in which the traits of our 
scenery, the spirit of our institutions, and the devotional faith that 
proved the conservative element in our history, are all consecrated by 
poetic art. 

" The first thought which suggests itself in regard to Bryant, is 
his respect for the art which he has so nobly illustrated. This is not 
less commendable than rare. Such an impatient spirit of utility pre- 
vails in our country, that even men of ideal pursuits are often infected 
by it. It is a leading article in the Yankee creed, to turn every 

* For a very complete and interesting survey of this class of writings, the 
reader is referred to ' Griswold's Female Poets of America.' His list com- 
prises nearly a hundred names; the biographical sketches afford a good insight 
into the domestic culture of the nation ; and the specimens are various, and 
often beautiful, including, besides the writers of colonial and revolutionary 
times, and those already mentioned, the names of Miss Townsend, Mrs. 
Oilman, Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Wells, Miss James, Mrs. Ward, Mrs, Ware, Mrs. 
Gray, Mrs. Little, Mrs. Child, Mrs. Hall, Mrs. Follen, Mrs. Green, Miss 
Taggart, Mrs. Ganfield, Miss B-ogart, Mrs. Mary E. Brooks, Mrs. Loud, 
Mrs. Chandler, Mrs. Barnes, Mrs. Kinney, Mrs. Eltett, Mrs. Scott, Mrs. 
Dinnies, Mrs. Stephens, Mrs. St. John, Mrs. L. P. Smith, Mrs. Oliver, Miss 
Mary E. Lee, Mrs. Esling, Mrs. Sawyer, Mrs. Bailey, Mrs. Thurston, Miss 
Day, Mrs. Dodd, Mrs. Judson, Mrs, Eames, Mrs. Emeline Smith, Misa 
Fuller, Mrs. Pierson, Mrs. Worthington, Mrs. Lewis, Mrs. M.owatt, Mrs. 
M'Donald, Lucy Hooper, Mrs. Mayo, Miss Jacobs, Mrs. Case, Mrs. Bolton, 
Miss Woodman, Mrs. Nichols, Mrs. Wakefield, Miss E. Lee, Miss Susan 
Pindar, Caroline May, Mrs. Neal, Mrs. Sproat, Mrs. Winslow, Miss Camp- 
bell, Miss Bayard, Mrs. Lascom, Edith May, Alice and Phoebe Carey, Miss 
Dawson, Mrs, Lowell, and Miss Phillips, 



CHAP. III.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



483 



endowment to account : and although a poet is generally left ' to 
chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancies/ as he lists^ occasions 
are not infrequent when even his services are available. Caliban's 
lowly toil will not supply all needs. The more ^gentle spiriting^ of 
Ariel is sometimes desired. To subserve the objects of party, to 
acquire a reputation upon which office may be sought, and to gratify 
personal ambition, the American poet is often tempted to sacrifice 
his true fame and the dignity of Art to the demands of Occasion. 
To this weakness Bryant has been almost invariably superior. He 
has preserved the elevation which he so early acquired. He has 
been loyal to the Muses. At their shrine his ministry seems ever free 
and sacred, wholly apart from the ordinary associations of life. With 
a pure heart and a lofty purpose, has he hymned the glory of Nature 
and the praise of Freedom. To this we cannot but, in a great de- 
gree, ascribe the serene beauty of his verse. The mists of worldly 
motives dim the clearest vision, and the sweetest voice falters amid 
the strife of passion. As the patriarch went forth alone to muse at 
eventide, the reveries of genius have been to Bryant, holy and private * 
seasons. They are as unstained by the passing clouds of this troubled 
existence, as the skies of his own 'Prairies' by village smoke. 

Thus it should be, indeed, with all poets ; but we deem it singu- 
larly happy when it is so with our own. The tendency of all action 
and feeling with us, is so much the reverse of poetical, that only the 
high, sustained, and consistent development of the imagination, would 
command attention or exert influence. The poet in this republic, 
does not address ignorance. In truth, the great obstacle with which 
he has to deal, so to speak, is intelligence. It is not the love of gain 
and physical comfort alone, that deadens the finer perceptions of our 
people. Among the highly educated there is less real enjoyment of 
poetry than is discovered by those to whom reading is almost a soli- 
tary luxury. No confoiTuity to fashion or affectation of taste influ- 
ences the latter. They seek the world of imagination and sentiment, 
with the greater delight from the limited satisfaction realized in their 
actual lot. To them Poetry is a great teacher of self-respect. It 
unfolds to them emotions familiar to their own bosoms. It celebrates 
scenes of beauty amid which they also are free to wander. It vin- 
dicates capacities and a destiny of which they partake. Intimations 
like these are seldom found in their experience, and for this reason, — 
cherished and hallowed associations endear an art which consoles 
while it brings innocent pleasure to their hearts. It is, therefore, in 
what is termed society, that the greatest barriers to poetic sympathy 
exist, and it is precisely here that it is most desirable the bard should 
be heard. But the idea of culture with this class lies almost exclu- 
sively in knowledge. They aim at understanding every question, are 
pertinacious on the score of opinion, and would blush to be thought 
unacquainted with a hundred subjects with which they have not a 
40* 



484 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP, III, 



particle of sympathy. The wisdom of loving, even without compre- 
hending ; the revelations obtained only through feeling ; the venera- 
tion that awes curiosity by exalted sentiment — all this is to them 
unknown. Life never seems miraculous to their minds, Nature wears 
a monotonous aspect, and routine gradually congeals their sensibilities. 
To invade this vegetative existence is the poet's vocation. Hazlitt 
says all that is worth remembering in life is the poetry of it. If so, 
habits wholly prosaic are as alien to wisdom as to enjoyment; and 
the elevated manner in which Bryant has uniformly presented the 
claims of poetry, the tranquil eloquence with which his chaste and 
serious muse appeals to the heart, deserves the most grateful recog- 
nition. There is something accordant with the genius of our country, 
in the mingled clearness and depth of his poetry. The glow of un- 
bridled passion seems peculiarly to belong to southern lands where 
despotism blights personal effort, and makes the ardent pursuit of 
pleasure almost a necessity. The ancient communities of northern 
latitudes have rich literatures from whence to draw materials for their 
verse. But here, where Nature is so -magnificent, and civil institu- 
tions so fresh, where the experiment of republicanism is going on, 
and each individual must think, if he do not work, Poetry, to illus- 
trate the age and reach its sympathies, should be thoughtful and vi- 
gorous. It should minister to no weak sentiment, but foster high, 
manly and serious views. It should identify itself with the domestic 
affections, and tend to solemnize rather than merely adorn existence. 
Such are the natural echoes of American life, and they characterize 
the poetry of Bryant. 

Bryant's love of Nature gives the prevailing spirit to his poetry. 
The feeling with him seems quite instinctive. It is not sustained 
by a metaphysical theory as in the case of Wordsworth, while it is 
imbued with more depth of pathos than is often discernible in Thom- 
son. The feeling with which he looks upon the wonders of Creation 
is remarkably appropriate to the scenery of the New World. His 
poems convey, to an extraordinary degree, the actual impression 
which is awakened by our lakes, mountains, and forests. There is 
in the landscape of every country something characteristic and pecu- 
liar. The individual objects may be the same, but their combination 
is widely different. The lucent atmosphere of Switzerland, the 
grouping of her mountains, the effect of glacier and water-fall, of 
peaks clad in eternal snow, impending over valleys whose emerald 
herbage and peaceful flocks realize our sweetest dreams of primeval 
life — all strike the eye and affect the mind in a manner somewhat 
different from similar scenes in other lands. The long, pencilled 
clouds of an Italian sunset — glowing above plains covered with 
brightly-tinted vegetation, seem altogether more placid and luxuriant 
than the gorgeous masses of golden vapour, towering in our western 
sky at the close of an autumnal day. These and innumerable other 



CHAP. III.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 485 

minute features are not only perceived, but intimately folt by the 
genuine poet. We esteem it one of Bryant's great merits that he 
has not only faithfully pictured the beauties, but caught the very 
spirit of our scenery. His best poems have an anthem-like cadence, 
which accords with the vast scenes they celebrate. He approaches 
the mighty forests, whose shadowy haunts only the footsteps of the 
Indian has penetrated, deeply conscious of its virgin grandeur. His 
harp is strung in harmony with the wild moan of the ancient boughs. 
Every moss-covered trunk breathes to him of the mysteries of Time, 
and each wild flower which lifts its pale buds above the brown and 
withered leaves, whispers some thought of gentleness. We feel, 
when musing with him amid the solitary woods, as if blessed with a 
companion peculiarly fitted to interpret their teachings ; and while 
intent in our retirement upon his page, we are sensible as it were, 
of the presence of those sylvan monarchs that crown the hill-tops 
and grace the valleys of our native land. No English park forma- 
lised by the hand of Art, no legendary spot like the pine grove of 
Ravenna, sm-rounds us. It is not the gloomy G-erman forest with 
its phantoms and banditti, but one of those primal, dense woodlands 
of America, where the oak spreads its enormous branches, and the 
frost-kindled leaves of the maple glow like flame in the sunshine ; 
where the tap of the woodpecker, and the whirring of the partridge, 
alone breaks the silence that broods, like the spirit of prayer, amid 
the interminable aisles of the verdant sanctuary. Any reader of 
Bryant, on the other side of the ocean, gifted with a small degree 
of sensibility and imagination, may derive from his poems the very 
awe and delight with which the first view of one of our majestic 
forests would strike his mind. 

The kind of interest with which Bryant regards Nature is common 
to the majority of minds in which a love of beauty is blended with 
reverence. This in some measure accounts for his popularity. Many 
readers, even of poetical taste, are repelled by the very vehemence 
and intensity of Byron. They cannot abandon themselves so utterly 
to the influences of the outward world, as to feel the waves bound 
beneath them "like a steed that knows his rider nor will their 
enthusiasm so far annihilate consciousness as to make them " a por- 
tion of the tempest." Another order of imaginative spirits do not 
greatly afi"ect the author of the Excursion, from the frequent baldness 
of his conceptions ; and not a few are unable to see the Universe 
through the spectacles of his philosophy. To such individuals, the 
tranquil delight with which the American poet expatiates upon the 
beauties of Creation is perfectly genial. There is no mystical lore 
in the tributes of his muse. All is clear, earnest, and thoughtful. 
Indeed, the same difiierence that exists between true-hearted, natural 
afi"ection, and the metaphysical love of the Platonists, may be traced 
between the manly and sincere lays of Bryant, and the vague and 



486 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. III. 



artificial effusions of transcendental bards. The former realize tbe 
definition of a poet which describes him as superior to the multitude 
only in degree, not in kind. He is the priest of a universal religion ; 
and clothes in appropriate and harmonious language sentiments, 
warmly felt and cherished. He requires no interpreter. There is 
nothing eccentric in his vision. Like all human beings, the burden 
of daily toil sometimes weighs heavily on his soul ; the noisy activity 
of common life becomes hopeless; scenes of inhumanity, error, and 
suffering grow oppressive, or more personal causes of despondency 
make " the grasshopper a burden." Then he turns to the quietude 
and beauty of Nature for refreshment. There he loves to read the 
fresh tokens of creative beneficence. The scented air of the meadows 
cools his fevered brow. The umbrageous foliage sways benignly 
around him. Vast prospects expand his thoughts beyond the narrow 
circle of worldly anxieties. The limpid stream upon whose banks 
he wandered in childhood, reflects each fleecy cloud and soothes his 
heart as the emblem of eternal peace. Thus faith is revived; the 
soul acquires renewed vitality, and the spirit of love is kindled again 
at the altar of Grod. Such views of Nature are perfectly accordant 
with the better impulses of the heart. There is nothing in them 
strained, unintelligible, or morbid. They are more or less familiar 
to all, and are as healthful overflowings of our nature as the prayer 
of repentance, or the song of thanksgiving. They distinguish the 
poetry of Bryant, and form one of its dominant charms. 

Nothing quickens the perceptions like genuine love. From the 
humblest professional attachment to the most chivalric devotion, what 
keenness of observation is born under the influence of that feeling 
which drives away the obscuring clouds of selfishness, as the sun 
consumes the vapour of the morning ! I never knew what varied 
associations could environ a shell-fish, until I heard an old oyster- 
merchant discourse of its qualities; and a landsman can have no 
conception of the fondness a ship may inspire, before he listens, on a 
moon-light night, amid the lonely sea, to the details of her build and 
workings, unfolded by a complacent tar. Mere instinct or habit will 
thus make the rude and illiterate see with better eyes than their 
fellows. When a human object commands such interest, how 
quickly does affection detect every change of mood and incipient 
want — reading the countenance as if it were the very chart of des- 
tiny ! And it is so with the lover of Nature. By virtue of his love 
comes the vision, if not "the faculty divine." Objects and simili- 
tudes seen heedlessly by others, or passed unnoticed, are stamped 
upon his memory. Bryant is a graphic poet, in the best sense of the 
word. He has little of the excessive detail of Street, or the homely 
exactitude of Crabbe. His touches, like his themes, are usually on 
a grander scale, yet the minute is by no means neglected. It is his 
peculiar merit to deal with it wisely. Enough is suggested to convey 



CHAP, ni.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



487 



a strong impression, and often by the introduction of a single cir- 
cumstance, the mind is instantly enabled to complete the picture. 
It is difficult to select examples of his power in this regard. The 
opening scene from ' A Winter Piece ' is as picturesque as it is true 
to fact. 

Bryant is eminently a contemplative poet. His thoughts are not 
less impressive than his imagery. Sentiment, except that which 
springs from benevolence and veneration, seldom lends a glow to his 
pages. Indeed, there is a remarkable absence of those spontaneous 
bursts of tenderness and passion, which constitute the very essence 
of a large portion of modern verse. He has none of the spirit of 
Campbell, or the narrative sprightliness of Scott. The few humorous 
attempts he has published are unworthy of his genius. Love is 
merely recognised in his poems ] it rarely forms the staple of any 
composition. His strength obviously consists in description and 
philosophy. It is one advantage of this species of poetry that it 
survives youth, and is, by nature, progressive. Bryant's recent 
poems are fully equal if not superior to any he has written. With 
his inimitable pictures there is ever blended high speculation, or a 
reflective strain of moral command. Some elevating inference or 
cheering truth is elicited from every scene consecrated by his muse. 
A noble simplicity of language, combined with these traits, often 
leads to the most genuine sublimity of expression. Some of his 
lines are unsurpassed in this respect. They so quietly unfold a great 
thought or magnificent image, that we are often taken by surprise. 
What a striking sense of mortality is aflforded by the idea, — 

" The oak 

Shall send his roots abroad and pierce thy mould." 
How grand the figure which represents the evening air, as 

" God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth." 
In the same poem he compares 

"The gentle souls that passed away, 

to the twilight breezes sweeping over a churchyard, — ■ 

"Sent forth from heaven among the sons of men," 
And gone into the boundless heaven again.'''' 

And what can be more suggestive of the power of the windS; 
than the figure by which they are said to 

"Scoop the ocean to its briny springs"? — 

He would make us feel the hoary age of the mossy and gigantic 
forest-trees, and not only alludes to their annual decay and renewal, 
but significantly adds, 

" The century-living crow 
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died." 



488 



A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. [CHAP. IH. 



To those who have never seen a Prairie, how vividly does one 
spread before the imagination, in the very opening of the poem 
devoted to those " verdant wastes." 

The progress of Science is admirably hinted in a line of ^The 
Ages/ when man is said to 

"Unwind the eternal dances of the sky." 

Instances like these might be multiplied at pleasure, to illustrate 
the efl&cacy of simple diction, and to prove that the elements of real 
poetry consist in truly grand ideas, uttered without affectation, and 
in a reverent and earnest spirit. 

A beautiful calm like that which rests on the noble works of the 
sculptor, breathes from the harp of Bryant. He traces a natural 
phenomenon, or writes in melodious numbers, the history of some 
familiar scene, and then, with almost prophetic emphasis, utters to 
the charmed ear a high lesson or sublime truth. In that pensive 
hymn in which he contrasts Man's transitor}^ being, with Nature's 
perennial life, solemn and affecting as are the images, they but serve 
to deepen the simple monition at the close. 

In ' The Fountain,' after a descriptive sketcb that brings its limpid 
flow and flowery banks almost palpably before us, how exquisite is 
the chronicle that follows ! Gruided by the poet, we behold that 
gushing stream, ages past, in the solitude of the old woods, when 
canopied by the hickory and plane, the humming-bird playing amid 
its spray, and visited only by the wolf, who comes to "lap its 
waters," the deer who leaves her "delicate foot-print" on its marge, 
and the "slow-paced bear that stopt and drank, and leaped across.'^ 
Then the savage war-cry drowns its murmur, and the wounded foe- 
man creeps slowly to its brink to "slake his death-thirst." Ere 
long a hunter's lodge is built, " with poles and boughs, beside the 
crystal well," and at length the lonely place is surrounded with the 
tokens of civilization. 

Thus the minstrel, even 

" From the gushing of a simple fount, 
Has reasoned to the mighty universe." 

The very rhythm of the stanzas to a Waterfowl," gives the im- 
pression of its flight. Like the bird's sweepiog wing, they float with 
a calm and majestic cadence to the ear. We see that solitary wan- 
derer of the "cold thin atmosphere;" we watch, almost with awe, its 
serene course, until " the abyss of heaven has swallowed up its form," 
and then gratefully echo the bard's consoling inference. 

But it is unnecessary to cite from pages so familiar ; or we might 
allude to the grand description of Freedom, and the beautiful " Hymn 
to Death," as among the noblest specimens of modern verse. The 
great principle of Bryant's faith is that * 

SEP -2 194' , 



CHAP. III.] A SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



489 



" Eternal Love doth keep 
In his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep." 

To set forth in strains the most attractive and lofty, this glorious 
sentiment, is the constant aim of his poetry. Gifted must be the 
man who is loyal to so high a vocation. From the din of outward 
activity, the vain turmoil of mechanical life, it is delightful and en- 
nobling to turn to a true poet, — one who scatters flowers along our 
path, and lifts our gaze to the stars, — breaking, by a word, the spell 
of blind custom, so that we recognize once more the original glory 
of the Universe, and hear again the latent music of our own souls. 
This high service has Bryant fulfilled. It will identify his memory 
with the loveliest scenes of his native land^ and endear it to her 
children for ever.^'* 



* Thoughts on the Poets. 



THE END. 



